


The Good, the Bad, and the Uninformed

by dabbling_dood



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Developing Mabifica, Dom/sub Undertones, Dungeons Dungeons and More Dungeons, Established BillDip, F/F, M/M, Misunderstandings, Secret Identity, Synesthesia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-27
Updated: 2019-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-03 00:49:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13329975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dabbling_dood/pseuds/dabbling_dood
Summary: When the bright pink catastrophe named Shooting Star takes on the local super-criminal, Gravity Falls gets enough drama to last for years.  Dipper doesn’t need a weird rivalry between his sister and his boyfriend, too.  Seriously, what’s with them?(AKA the Superpower AU where nobody tells Dipper anything.)





	1. Dipper - First Day Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Superpower AU I've been posting about on my Tumblr page. Somehow I've gathered a following for it before I even posted the fic. It's crazy, this Internet thing.

Dipper was out of town when Gravity Falls’ resident superhero made her debut.  Grunkle Stan had called from the coast to ask the twins for help on an expedition on the Stan-O-War.

“Invading species, environmental impact, blah blah blah.  Nerd stuff,” Stan had said.  “The point is, Ford wants to hunt down a bunch of squids and move ‘em back where they came from.  We could use some extra hands.  You kids busy?”

Dipper had packed up immediately.  Mabel, who had already had plans, had seen him off with a hug and made him promise to take lots of pictures.

A month later, Dipper returned to Gravity falls and almost ran over the new superhero.

An explosion made Dipper’s car rattle, and a colorfully-dressed woman flew into the intersection just as the light turned green.  Dipper slammed the brakes.

The woman scrambled to her feet.  Shaking herself, she fired a grappling hook at a light pole and sailed back the way she came.  The tassel on her helmet was smoking.  Dipper gaped after her until someone behind him honked.

As he drove up to the Mystery Shack, eyes peeled for anyone else who might dive in front of his car, Dipper passed a cluster of trees dotted with colorful scribbles.  He slowed for a better look.  Scorch marks, bright yellow scribbles, a scattering of red and cyan—there was the distinctive triangle.  Dipper thinned his lips.

“That guy again,” he muttered.  He made a mental note to come back later to copy down the coded message.

Mabel didn’t slam into him like a sugar-crazed Labrador when he came through the front door.  Dipper took a moment to put down his luggage before he called, “I’m back!”

No answer.  Frowning, Dipper checked his text messages.  Maybe it was her shift in the gift shop.  After moving his luggage to the attic bedroom, Dipper went to find her.

There was a cheerful woman behind the register, but not the one Dipper was expecting.  Melody looked up from counting money and beamed.

“Dipper, you’re back!” she said.

“I’m back,” he replied, returning her smile.  “Is Mabel running tours?”

“No, she left in a hurry a few minutes ago.  She said she had something to do in town.”

Dipper furrowed his brow.  “Huh.  Okay.  How about Soos?”

“He’s running tours.”  Melody leaned over the counter, peering through the entrance to the museum.  “He should finish up soon, though.”  She shrugged apologetically.

“That’s cool.  I can wait,” Dipper assured her.  Sighing, Melody closed the cash register and walked around the counter to him.

“Sorry it’s not the big welcome you were supposed to get.  _I’m_ happy to see you, Dipper,” she smiled up at him, pulling him into a hug. 

Dipper laughed sheepishly.  “That’s okay.  Thanks, Melody.”

As Dipper settled on the counter, much like Wendy had done for years, his phone buzzed in his pocket.  He had a new message from—oh, yeah.  He still had to fix his boyfriend’s edits to his contact information.

_Supreme Sexlord 3000: Holy shit i have the best pickup line TEXT ME AS SOON AS UR HOME_

Dipper grinned in spite of himself.

_D: If you make another joke about pining for me I’m breaking up with you_

_SS3k: 1) that joke is never going away 2) you’d miss my charm n raw sex appeal_

_D: I could just jerk off to pics of you_

_SS3k: Wanna make a video together too?_

_D: Tell me this new pickup line you nerd_

Dipper had just hit send when Soos emerged from the museum with a flock of tourists.  Soos stopped short in the middle of an announcement about the lowest prices they’ve ever had (funny, since they were definitely higher than Dipper remembered) and gaped at Dipper.

“Dude!  You’re back!”  Soos practically knocked Dipper over in his attempt to hug him.  Melody caught Dipper’s arm.

“Whoops.  Hold on.”  Flipping up the eye patch, Soos blinked a few times.  “Depth perception reactivated.  Let’s try this again.”

Dipper accepted the hug, laughing.  “It’s good to see you, Soos.”

“You too.  Funny, you don’t smell like the ocean.  What happened to the grand voyage at sea?”

“I showered at the motel last night, but there are probably barnacles in my laundry.”

“Sweet, souvenirs!”  Soos looked around.  “Hey, Melody.  Is Mabel still not back?”

Melody opened her mouth to answer, but the door to the gift shop slammed open, and Mabel barreled inside.

“Dipper’s car is out front!” Mabel shouted, sounding out of breath.  She brandished a shopping bag.  “Quick, everybody take one—”

Dipper peered out from behind Soos.  “Take one of what?”

“No, Dipper!”  Mabel clutched at the air.  “You’re early!  Oh, well.  Here, you have one, too.”  Tossing Dipper a party popper, Mabel hugged the breath out of him.

“You don’t have to throw me a welcome-back party.  It was only a month,” Dipper said, but he squeezed her right back.  She smelled like smoke.

“ _Only_ a month?  That’s four weeks!  Thirty days!  I have so much to tell you!”

“We’ve had more time apart in college.”

Mabel blew a raspberry.  “Come help me set off party poppers.”

“Be honest—how many did you set off before you got here?” Dipper asked with a wry smile, following her toward the door he’d used to enter the shop.  When Mabel sent a blank look over her shoulder, he added, “I can smell the smoke on you.”

“Oh!”  Mabel spun around so fast that Dipper almost ran into her.  “No, that’s from the superhero fight!”

Dipper blinked dumbly.  One of the tourists piped up before he did.  “You got caught in the middle of that?”

“Yeah!  I was buying these," Mabel said, shaking the bag of party poppers, “and then _BOOM_!  There was an explosion right outside!  People were running for cover!”

“Did you see Shooting Star?” Melody and Soos asked at the same time.

“Who?” Dipper said.

“I heard she showed up right away,” a tourist interrupted.  “Did she really get thrown by the explosion?  I heard she went flying and still got up again.”

Mabel beamed.  “She was there.  She showed Enkryptos who’s boss.”

“Okay, Enkryptos I know about," Dipper interrupted, "but who’s Shooting Star?”

Dipper swore every face in the shop turned to look at him.  Then, there were six people talking at once, some shoving their smartphones at him with news articles on the screens.

“—new superhero—”

“—everybody’s seen her—”

“—living under a rock, man?”

“—helps anybody in need—”

“—talked to her once, and she’s so friendly—”

Dipper reeled, inching backwards.  An image on one phone caught his attention—a woman beaming out from under a pink bicycle helmet, eyes bright behind the domino mask.  She had stars painted on her gloves.  “Wait, _her?_ ”

“That’s Shooting Star,” Mabel confirmed proudly.

“I almost hit her with my car earlier.”

In the responding flurry of excitement, Mabel ushered Dipper out of the shop and into the house.  Melody waved.  Dipper heard Soos call, “Tell me all about it later, dudes!” as the door closed behind them.

Mabel bounced into the den, dragging Dipper by the hand.  She flopped down on the couch.  “I have _so_ much to tell you, Dip-Dop.  Things got crazy while you were gone!  You’re not gonna believe how much you missed!”

“Yeah?”  Dipper dropped down next to her.

“Oh, yeah,” Mabel said, nodding aggressively.  “Remember how Enkryptos started showing up a few months ago?”

Dipper huffed.  “How could I not?  He was all over the news.  _‘Local Super-Criminal Strikes Again!’_   _‘Enkryptos Spotted Downtown!’_ ”  He made jazz hands.  “Wasn’t there an article about Enkryptos putting Gravity Falls back on the map?  _‘Look, We Have an Attention-Seeking Super-Diva Just Like the Big Cities!’_ ”

Mabel gave Dipper a shove, giggling.  “Give them a break.  You know people were worried that the superhero craze would end up stealing our tourists.  Having one here isn’t a bad thing.”

Dipper opened his mouth.

“Okay, yes, having a super _villain_ is a bad thing,” Mabel cut him off.

“Super-criminal.”

“Whatever.  Same thing.”  Mabel flapped a hand dismissively.  Dipper would have launched into why it was _not_ the same thing, but he would have been wasting his breath.  “As I was saying, Enkryptos broke into a pharmacy a couple weeks after you left, and right when he was about to make his getaway, this awesome lady with a bright pink costume swung in and kicked his butt!  Shooting Star stands up to that jerk every time he shows up!”

“Does she do all the showboating and dramatic monologues, too?” Dipper asked drily.

“Come on, Dipper, she’s a superhero.  What’s the point if she doesn’t do that stuff?”

“Kind of like Enkryptos’ villain routine?”

“Yeah,” Mabel said, but then faltered.  She stood up.  “Wait, no.  Not like—Shooting Star is a hero, not a villain.”

“Doesn’t matter.  It’s all part of the superhero craze.  It’s like when that first superhero showed up in Louisiana, and then more started popping up all over the United States.  At first it was just in towns with major crime rates—and _that_ made sense, seriously—but now it's just a bunch of people doing crazy stunts and interfering with police work.  There’s a reason vigilantism is illegal.”

Mabel blinked at Dipper, fiddling with her curly hair.  “But, um.  The police haven’t been able to catch Enkryptos.  Shooting Star stopped him tons of times.”

“Has she caught him?” Dipper asked.  Mabel adjusted her headband and didn’t reply.  “Shooting Star and Enkryptos are competing for the spotlight.  That’s it.”

Mabel made an unhappy noise.  As she picked at her sweater, a twinge of remorse pulled at Dipper’s gut.  He cleared his throat.

“What else happened while I was gone?” Dipper asked.  “You said you had a lot to tell me.”

Mabel faltered.  “I—oh, yeah, y’know…”  She laughed sheepishly, rocking back on her heels.  “Just the excitement about Shooting Star.”

“Okay.”  Dipper glanced at the door.  “I should unpack my stuff—oh, and take a picture of that coded message.  Did you see the writing Enkryptos left about a mile from here?”

Mabel grimaced.  “Yeah, I saw.”

“He usually leaves stuff further into town.  Why’d he come all the way out here?”

“I don’t know.  Nothing that guy does makes sense.”  Mabel crossed her arms, eyes narrowed and nose wrinkled.

Humming thoughtfully, Dipper headed for the attic.  There was a picture message waiting when he checked his phone; probably his boyfriend’s latest pick-up line.  Dipper opened the image.

A dark-haired young man grinned at the camera, his colored contacts matching the caution tape around the intersection behind him.  His slicked-back hair was messier than usual.  It was in better shape than the cars in the intersection, though.  One brown arm stretched out in a grand gesture toward—

A line of pick-up trucks.  Dipper threw his phone at the bed.

He immediately picked it back up to type, _Fuck you, Bill._

_SS3k: Your place or mine?_

_D: Mine.  I want to punch your terrible awful face in the comfort of my own home_

_SS3k: Worth it  
SS3k: I’ll be there in 10_

_D: Wait you’re really coming?_

_SS3k: Are you really gonna punch my terrible awful face?_

_D: No_

_SS3k: I’ll be there in 5_

Shaking his head, Dipper went back to unpacking, a smile on his face.  He faltered with a bundle of briny-smelling laundry in his arms.

“Oh, yeah,” he muttered.  Dumping his laundry in the hamper, he grabbed his phone again.

_D: Mabel’s here this time_

_SS3k: You’re finally introducing me to the rumored twin sister?  
SS3k: It’s about time_

_D: It’s not my fault you guys keep missing each other_

_SS3k: Riiiight_  
SS3k: I’ll consult with her on that  
SS3k: Then we’ll see your lies for what they are

Dipper rolled his eyes.  Sure, he hadn’t gone out of his way to introduce Bill to Mabel, but he hadn’t actively kept them from meeting, either.  He had just needed time to brace himself for it.  If and when Bill discovered Mabel’s unique brand of madness…

Dipper had played the voice of reason for them each individually.  He could do the math.

If Bill and Mabel _didn’t_ get along, however…

Dipper buried that idea under rose-tinted images of Bill talking Mabel into playing DD n' D with them.  Mabel would come up with a fun, colorful character, probably in the chaotic good alignment, and have a great time, just like Dipper had always insisted she would—

The doorbell sucker-punched Dipper out of his daydream.  He sprinted down the stairs with a shout of “I’ve got it!” nearly crashing into Mabel as he scrambled between her and the door.  She gave him a weird look but stepped back.

The moment Dipper opened the door, he snorted.  “Seriously?”

Bill grinned, adjusting the battered rose he’d tucked behind his ear.  Three more dangled precariously from his vest pocket, and there was another between his teeth.

“Didja miss me?” he asked.

“C’mere,” Dipper laughed, pulling him into a hug.

“Aww, you missed me.”  Bill took the rose out of his mouth for a kiss. 

Although Dipper kept the contact short, wary of their audience, Bill stuck close and tucked the rose behind Dipper’s ear.  Dipper furrowed his brow, sniffing.  “Are these burnt?”

“Considering they came out of a burning flower shop, they’re in great shape!”  Bill pointed at the rose behind Dipper’s ear.  “The place exploded—and I mean that literally, by the way.  There were flowers everywhere.  I grabbed some for ya.”

“You were there, too?” Mabel chimed in.

Bill looked up, blinking like he’d only just noticed she was there.  “Oh, hi!  Were you at the big showdown earlier?”

“Yeah, just across from the flower shop.”

“I must’ve missed you somehow.  Then again, we’ve never officially met.”  Throwing an arm around Dipper’s shoulders, Bill prompted, “You wanna take care of the formalities, Pine Tree?”

Dipper cleared his throat.  “Right.  Mabel, this is my boyfriend, Bill.  Bill, my sister Mabel.”

“Heya.”

“Uh, hi, Bill,” Mabel said, furrowing her brow.  Dipper’s stomach clenched.  Were Bill’s bright yellow contacts creeping her out?  No, he hadn’t been wearing them when he showed up.  Dipper glanced at Bill to make sure.

Bill wasn’t wearing his contact lenses, but he kept blinking and squinting at Mabel like he’d just put them on.  Ice crept up Dipper’s spine.  His boyfriend and sister already hated each other.  Now it would be tense every time Bill came over, and Bill would get moody whenever Dipper mentioned Mabel, and Mabel wouldn’t help Dipper talk through his relationship issues anymore—

“So!  I hear you and Dipper do matching costumes every Halloween.  Any pictures I can paw through?”

Mabel gasped, a wild grin stretching across her face.  “Oh my gosh, I’ll get the scrapbook!”

Dipper blinked.  As Mabel darted up the stairs to the room that had once been Grunkle Stan’s office, Bill gave Dipper a squeeze and a shit-eating grin.

“Something wrong?” Bill asked, pulling a singed rose from his pocket and tapping Dipper’s nose with it.

Dipper batted at the flower.  “Nah.  Come on, Mabel’s gonna have tons of scrapbooks to show you.”

“Yes!  Lots of kiddie photos!”  Bill didn’t tap Dipper’s nose this time so much as engulf it in the burnt blossom.  Dipper sneezed.

“Kitten sneeze!” Mabel yelled from upstairs.

“There’s a whole kitten to go with it!” Bill called back.  Dipper shoved him.  Forget the weird looks—Dipper’s first concern was beating Bill upstairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter two is getting one last proofread before I post it. Fair warning: my updates will be sporadic after that.


	2. Mabel - Crazy Stupid

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mabel's perspective, this time. Cue the slow-burn Mabifica.

Dipper was out of town when Mabel stumbled into the superhero business.  When her shift at the Mystery Shack ended and the post-college blues tugged her sleeve like a chatty toddler (what to do where to start how to pay taxes and get a mortgage and) Mabel wandered around town and, ultimately, into Old Man McGucket.

He offered to show her his latest invention.  She was so eager for the distraction that she tripped and knocked a set of test tubes all over herself.

Once Mabel stopped glowing like a lava lamp, she felt pretty normal.  Dipper might have been able to interpret McGucket’s science-y, half-senile explanation, but Mabel spent a few days discovering the effects for herself, replayed McGucket’s explanation in her head, and changed it so that he sang Daffy Punk instead: “Hittin’ harder, fightin’ better, movin’ faster; you’ll git stronger!”

Then he did a little dance routine with his raccoon.  That had Mabel giggling through her shift.

Normally, Dipper would’ve been the first to know about Mabel’s newly-gained superpowers.  Mabel would have shoved her costume designs and her list of possible hero names at him for feedback.  After all, what else was she supposed to do with superpowers?  Caped fighters had begun popping up around the nation for months, now.  There was one right in Gravity Falls.  Flashy costume, evil laugh, general showmanship—the guy was practically begging for a challenger.

Oh, Enkryptos had seemed thrilled when Mabel took the stage as Shooting Star.  Dipper, not so much.

“These superhero types are crazy.  Who in their right mind would do this crap?”

Mabel stopped watching the television to send a cautious look at Dipper.  He’d been home for almost a week, now, and Mabel still hadn’t let him in on her secret.  As a clip of Mabel in her colorful home-made costume played on the screen, Dipper shook his head.

“Look at Shooting Star.  Her outfit is so impractical.”  Dipper gestured at the TV with the remote.  “No padding, no armor…  Oof.  Yikes.”  On screen, Shooting Star had taken a bad tumble.  On the couch, Mabel winced.  She still had bruises from that.  “Is she trying to get killed?”

“Maybe she didn’t think of it,” Mabel offered weakly.

Dipper huffed.  “She’s either crazy or stupid.”

Mabel kept her head down, eyes on the TV.  “She’s just trying to help.”

“Yeah, but she’s doing as much harm as Enkryptos.  Have you seen how much property damage she’s caused?  These superhero types think they can do whatever they want as long as it’s for the greater good.  They don’t think about how the collateral damage affects the rest of us.”

On the TV, an explosion sent Shooting Star and Enkryptos flying.  Flowers and debris pelted the sidewalk.  The owner of the shop peeked out as the dust cleared, eyes wide and frightened, and Mabel curled in on herself.  That shop still hadn’t been repaired.

Eyes burning, Mabel slipped out of the room and grabbed her bag.  Dipper looked up.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

Mabel cleared her throat.  “Visiting Paz.”

“Okay.”  Dipper sounded confused, but Mabel didn’t turn around.  “See you later.”

“Yeah, see you.”

Ten minutes later, a baffled-looking Pacifica led Mabel to her room and closed the door.  Mabel threw her arms around her.

“I’m a _terrible person_!” she wailed.

Pacifica balked, her hands dancing around Mabel’s shoulders before settling into the hug.  Mabel usually launched herself at Grenda for sob-fests—aggressive hugs tended to knock Candy off her feet, and it had taken years to ease Pacifica into physical displays of affection—but with Grenda in Austria and Candy finishing her Master’s degree, Pacifica took the brunt of Mabel’s comfort-cuddles.

In a move she must have picked up from Candy, Pacifica rubbed Mabel’s back.  She steered the two of them toward the bed to sit down.  “What happened?”

Mabel told her about the flower shop.  And the gas station from a few days before that.  And the motel.  And the bakery.  Not to mention the damaged roads, public property, and automobiles that had piled up over time.

“People probably got _hurt_!” Mabel sobbed into Pacifica’s five-hundred dollar sundress.  (They’d been shopping together when she bought it.  Mabel had almost had a heart attack when Pacifica bought her a matching one.)  “All the _fire_ and _explosions_ and _car_ _accidents_ —”

“The fire and explosions are Enkryptos’ fault,” Pacifica cut in, leaning back to look Mabel in the face.  “You might’ve caused some collateral damage, but that was all him.”

Mabel sniffled and wiped her nose.  “Tell _Dipper_ that.”

“Dipper?”  Pacifica straightened.  When she spoke again, there was murder in her voice.  “What did he say?”

Mabel shrank back, picking at the hem of her sweater.  “Well…”

“What did your idiot brother say, Mabel?”

“It’s not his fault!  He still doesn’t know I’m Shooting Star, and he wasn’t…” Mabel blinked rapidly as fresh tears stung her eyes.  “…He wasn’t wrong, exactly.  I _do_ cause a lot of collateral damage.  My costume _doesn’t_ have enough padding.  I’m…”  She choked.  “ _He hates me!_ ”

Pacifica scoffed, but there was something reassuring about it as she let Mabel huddle against her.  “He doesn’t hate you.  That would be crazy.  He’d totally support you if he knew what was going on.”

“But…  He said…” Mabel hiccupped.

“If _you_ want to change your suit or watch out for property damage or whatever, you can totally do that.  You don’t have to stop doing your superhero thing just because Dipper likes to nit-pick.”

Mabel wiped her nose on her sleeve.  A giggle snuck up on her.  “You kinda like to nit-pick, too.”

“I’m a _perfectionist_ ,” Pacifica protested, nudging Mabel with her elbow.  She stiffened when Mabel winced.  “Oh.  Did I hit a bruise?”

“Kinda,” Mabel admitted.

Pacifica thinned her lips, nails drumming.  “You do need more protective gear in that costume.  That slip you took the other day—god, I thought you’d need a hospital.”

“More padding would be good,” Mabel agreed.  “The knee and elbow pads and the bike helmet are great, but…”

“Do you wear shin-guards?”

“Yeah, I got ‘em after the first couple days.”

“How many layers do you wear?”

“Uh, it’s whatever I wore that day, the suit, and then the helmet and shin guards and stuff.”

“That’s _it?_ ”

“I was thinking about the design, okay?”

Mabel ended up scribbling costume updates into her heavily-decorated sketchbook, only pausing when Pacifica held out a wastebasket for the pile of crumpled tissues in her lap.  Pacifica sat down next to her.  Twirling her pen, Mabel glanced at the phone in Pacifica’s hand.

“Whatcha lookin’ at?”  Mabel tilted her head.  “‘Startup merchandising’?”

Pacifica scrolled through a web page and tapped a link.  “If you sold merchandise, you’d be able to, like, throw money at the collateral damage problem.  You’ve got enough fans to make a good profit.  Here, look.”  She turned the phone so that Mabel could see.  “You can send your own designs here to make keychains, mugs, stickers…”

“Wait, wait!  Go back to that link!”  Mabel lurched into Pacifica’s space, practically grabbing the phone.  Pacifica scrolled up to a banner labelled ‘3D printing’.  Mabel bounced in place.  “Paz.  _Paz._   Do you think I could make _Shooting Star toys?_ ”

Squinting at the banner, Pacifica said, “I’d hire a specialized toy production company for that.”

“I’ll come up with some designs!”

“Let’s find out what specifications you’ll need.”

By evening, Mabel had filled almost ten pages of her sketchbook with sketches of logos, action figures, and sales tags—“THE SHOOTING STAR FOUNDATION: DONATING 80% OF PROFITS BACK TO THE COMMUNITY.”

Pacifica had talked her down from one hundred percent.  Injuries and costume repairs weren't free of charge, after all.

“It’ll be enough, right?” Mabel asked.  In spite of herself, tears started to well up in her eyes again.  “I just… I don’t want people to hate me.”

Pacifica rolled her eyes, but fondness curled at the corner of her mouth.  “Nobody is going to hate you.  You have a lot of fans.  _And_ you have something all the big heroes have.”

“Determination?” Mabel pumped her fist, and Pacifica thinned her lips, rolling her pearls between manicured fingers.

“Um.”  She cleared her throat.  “I was going to say access to a lot of money, but that’s…  That’s true too.”

Mabel stared blankly.  Pacifica arched a brow in return.

“Mabel.  I’m totally going to sponsor you,” Pacifica said.  There was an unspoken “duh” in her tone.  “Materials, merchandising rights, production, distribution—I can cover all that so you can hit the ground running.  None of this Kickstarter crap or— _why are you crying again?!_ ”

Mabel rubbed her streaming eyes, laughing wetly.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.  I’m just so lucky.”

This time, Pacifica pulled her into a hug, although not quickly enough to hide the exasperated smile stealing over her mouth.  She gave Mabel’s hair a tentative stroke.  Grenda always stroked Mabel’s head when she cried, but Pacifica carefully extracted herself and hid her hands behind her back like children awaiting discipline.

“Well,” she said, coughing delicately.  “It’s not like I’m the only one.  Grenda will throw all kinds of foreign connections at you once she gets back, and Candy will…  I don’t know.  Candy finds the weirdest resources.”

Mabel sighed.  “I can’t wait ‘til we all get together again.  Talking about this stuff just isn’t the same over video chat.  Good thing you’re here, huh?”

“Where else would I go?”

Pacifica helped Mabel clean herself up before she left.  Mabel had learned early on not to ask why Pacifica was so good at hiding the signs of a recent cry-fest.  With her stuffy nose clearing, Mabel caught the soothing scent of Pacifica’s perfume—possibly floral and definitely expensive.  Eau de dandelion fluff, maybe.  Mabel needed a spritz of that on a sweater or her pillow or something.

When Mabel got home, Dipper wasn’t there.  When Dipper got home, Mabel was stretched out on the couch, binge-watching _Ducktective_ like the reluctant adult she was.  Another voice made Mabel twist her head around on the armrest.

“Oh, hey there, Mabel!” Bill called from the entryway, and Mabel’s mouth pulled into a grin to match his.

“Hi, Bill.  Hi, Dipper.  Come merge with the couch.”  She waved an arm.

“Sure, let’s fuse into a horrifying human-couch monstrosity.  We’ll scare the hell out of people.”

“You already do that,” Dipper snorted, elbowing his boyfriend.

“I’m not going over this again, Pine Tree—Yes, I am,” Bill interrupted himself as he followed Dipper into the den.  “The aquarium story was supposed to be funny!  _You_ were laughing!”

“The aquarium story?” Mabel asked.

Dipper shook his head.  “Bill was a messed-up kid.”

“You don’t know the half of it, Pine Tree.”

Mabel scooted over to make room on the couch.  “You guys wanna watch _Ducktective_ , or something else?”

“ _Ghost Harassers_ is on,” Dipper said, taking a seat next to Mabel.  Bill dropped down next to him, making the couch bounce, while Mabel groped through the cushions.

“Hang on, I have to find the remote.”  Mabel lifted a seat cushion and nearly tipped Dipper off the couch.  “Where’d it go?”

They searched for a few minutes before Dipper huffed, “You know what?  Let’s use the buttons on the TV.  That’s a thing we can do.”

“Blasphemy,” Mabel gasped.

“Think he’s a pod person?” Bill stage-whispered.

Dipper shook his head, flicking through the channels.  “Don’t like it?  Find the remote.”

“Sounds like something a pod person would say,” Bill said, and Mabel nodded gravely.

“We’ll have to test him.  If you’re the real Dipper, go make us some popcorn.”  She pointed at the kitchen.

Dipper put his hands on his hips, unimpressed.  “Because I’m the real Dipper, I’m going to make _me_ some popcorn.  You lazy bums get none.”

“Boo, pod person!”

“Imposter!  I demand popcorn!”

As Dipper disappeared into the kitchen, something bumped against Mabel’s stomach.  She gasped and reached into the pocket on the front of her sweater.  _There_ it was.

Mabel held up the remote, beaming.  “Found it!”

“Seriously?” Dipper called from the kitchen.

“ _Ahh_ , so convenient,” Mabel sighed loudly, sinking into the couch.  She flipped through the channels.  “Doing stuff without getting up.  It’s so nice.”

“Whoa, hold on!  Back to the news!” Bill said.

Mabel backtracked a few channels.  When shaky footage from her latest superhero battle appeared, both she and Bill leaned forward.  Shooting Star dove across the screen.  Flames erupted nearby. 

The camera swung to catch Enkryptos fiddling with the flamethrower in his gauntlet, armor glinting gold as he stepped into the sunlight.  His mask—an inverted triangle with no visible eyeholes—glinted gold, too.

“I can't figure out how he can see through that thing,” Mabel remarked.

“It works like a one-way mirror, probably,” Bill said.  “He can see out, but nobody can see in.”

On cue, Enkryptos glanced at the camera, grinned, and aimed his flamethrower at it.  The camera shook violently as the person holding it lurched backwards.  Enkryptos waltzed away, laughing.  Mabel heard Bill snicker.

“That was mean,” Mabel said, but she was smiling.  She fought in a bike helmet and kneepads.  Enkryptos’ easygoing routine made her job much less intimidating.

Biting her lip, Mabel watched herself lure Enkryptos under a store’s awning.  Her grappling hook shot past Enkryptos’ head, colliding with an inconspicuous gray lump tucked into one corner.  Enkryptos looked up.

Hornets swarmed out of the nest.  As Enkryptos recoiled, Shooting Star retracted her grappling hook and ran for cover.  Enkryptos sent a stream of fire at the hornet nest.  For a split second, Shooting Star paused, looking over her shoulder as the hornets in the air fell like embers.

Then an army of blazing kamikazes poured out, and Enkryptos took his cue to run like hell.  Shooting Star was already halfway down the block.

With the hornets safe behind the TV screen, Mabel laughed along with the news commentators.  Bill was laughing too, head thrown back against the couch.  He had one hand over his face.

“Hornets,” he wheezed, “are top-tier villains.”

“They’re pure evil!” Mabel cried, shaking her fist.

The laughter died down suddenly.  Mabel stared at the lower half of Bill’s face, the painfully familiar grin peeking out under his hand.  Bill’s grin faded as he looked back at her with wide eyes.  Vaguely, Mabel realized she’d used the same voice she used as Shooting Star.

There was a moment of dead silence.  Mabel opened her mouth, closed it, and opened it again.  Bill pointed at her with hand and the TV with the other.

“ _You?_ ” Mabel mouthed.

“What the hell?” Bill— _Enkryptos_ —mouthed back.

In the kitchen, the microwave dinged.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drop by my tumblr blog (doodling-dood) if you haven't already. There's more information about my plans for this story, plus a bunch of fanart.


	3. Dipper - Best-Laid Plans

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place at about the same time as the last one.  
> I had to rearrange some of the events I had planned to include in this chapter. There's nothing quite as maddening as filling in gaps before the plot really starts to move.

“Mabel’s been acting weird,” Dipper said, fiddling with a steel ruler.

Bill finished cutting the top off of a soda can.  “Good weird?  Bad weird?  Weird with a chance of catastrophe?”

“I don’t know.  I think she’s avoiding me.”  Passing the ruler to Bill, Dipper collected the discarded top and bottom of the can.  One landed in the recycling bin.  The other bounced off the edge and rolled across the floor of Bill’s apartment.  “Crap.”

 “How long has that been going on?” Bill asked, flattening out the remaining aluminum sheet.  Dipper got up to retrieve his missed shot.

“Just today.  I think,” he added, frowning.  “Maybe I just didn’t notice it.  But I only got back yesterday, so it hasn’t been going on for very long.”

“Good!  That makes it easier to retrace your steps.”  Bill took off his work gloves and tossed them across the table as Dipper sat down.  “Smooth out the edges for me, willya?  I need to take measurements from this sexy guy.”  He held up a clay figurine—Dipper’s DD n’ D character.

Snorting, Dipper put on the gloves and dug through Bill’s toolbox for the steel wool.  “Let’s see…  I introduced you to her.  She seemed to like you just fine.”

“Sure she did.  I’m a charming guy!”

“You guys were looking at each other kind of weird, though.  What was that about?”

“I thought I recognized her from somewhere.”  Bill shrugged.  “Maybe we’ve seen each other around.”

Dipper hummed.  “Oh, we talked about my trip.  I know she misses Grunkle Stan and Great Uncle Ford, but she was happy to hear about them, so that can’t be it.”

Bill grunted absently, carefully folding creases into the paper mock-up he had just cut out.

“Then you left, and we watched TV for a while.  That’s what we were doing today, too, before she went to her friend’s house.”

Bill fitted the mock-up over the figurine’s chest.  “Is that it?”

“Yeah.”  Dipper stopped scrubbing the edges of the flattened aluminum, frowning.  “She likes Shooting Star.  Maybe she’s disappointed because I didn’t get excited about the news.”

“That would be a downer,” Bill agreed, reaching for the aluminum sheet.

“But Mabel likes lots of stuff that I don’t,” Dipper protested.  “I’m not stopping her.  I’m just saying, Shooting Star isn’t as cool as everybody makes her out to be.  Why would Mabel take it so personally?”

“Pine Tree, Pine Tree, Pine Tree.”  Bill put a hand on Dipper’s shoulder.  “There’s something you need to understand about women.”

“Bill, I’ve dated more girls than you have.”

Covering up Dipper’s mouth, Bill continued, “Here’s the secret.  You ready?”  He leaned forward.  “Women, like men, are bat-shit insane.”

Dipper snorted, swatting at Bill’s hand.

“I’m serious, Pine Tree.  The human race is fucked.”

“Make your stupid armor,” Dipper said, muffled, and pushed the aluminum closer to Bill.

“Technically, it’s _your_ stupid armor.”

As Bill traced the mock-up onto the aluminum and cut it out, Dipper’s phone buzzed in his pocket.  The caller ID made him frown.

“Uh-oh.”

“FBI?” Bill asked.

“What?  No, it’s Pacifica Northwest, but she never calls.  Did something happen with Mabel?”  Dipper tapped the answer button and raised the phone to his ear.  “Hello?”

“If you ever insult Mabel’s favorite superhero again, you’re dead to me.”

Dipper balked.  He looked at the phone screen.  “Pacifica?”

“ _Dead_ , Dipper,” she repeated with just as much ice.

“Uh.”  Dipper glanced at Bill, who had stopped working to watch him flounder.  “Did something—?  Where’s Mabel?”

“She’s fine.  She just went home.  You’d better apologize for being an insensitive idiot,” Pacifica huffed.  Dipper winced.

“Is she upset?” he asked in a small voice.

Static crackled as Pacifica let out one of her long-suffering sighs.  “Just don’t talk so much crap about Shooting Star.  She’s, like, Mabel’s idol.”

“Okay, okay,” Dipper mumbled, rubbing his neck.  “Thanks for telling me.”

When Dipper hung up, Bill raised his brows expectantly.  “So?”

Dipper slumped into his seat.  “So, it was the Shooting Star thing.  Mystery solved.”

“Called it.”

Wrinkling his nose, Dipper stuffed his phone back into his pocket.  He gestured at the supplies spread between them.  “Will this take much longer?”

“Maybe fifteen, twenty minutes,” Bill offered.

“Cool.  Let’s go to my place when we’re done.  I want to see how Mabel’s doing.”

“You got it.”

The armor chest-plate fit nicely on Dipper’s figurine.  Dipper smiled at the finished product, but he couldn’t admire it for long.  As soon as they’d put away the supplies, Bill and Dipper left the second-story apartment for the Mystery Shack.

The sounds of _Ducktective_ met Dipper inside—Mabel’s go-to cheering-up series—but Dipper took solace in the fact that she wasn’t watching _Dream Boy High_ or mixing a batch of “adult edition” Mabel Juice.

“Hi, Bill.  Hi, Dipper.”  Mabel smiled, though it was subdued.  “Come merge with the couch.”

“Sure, let’s fuse into a horrifying human-couch monstrosity.  We’ll scare the hell out of people,” Bill replied in true Bill fashion. 

Their banter eased Dipper’s nerves.  By the time he had gone to kitchen to make popcorn, Pacifica’s phone call had retreated from the forefront of his brain.  He started the microwave and leaned against the counter, bumping a plastic bag of something pink and sparkly.  It tipped over the edge.

Dipper’s hands shot out with the surge of adrenaline known only to those who have had to clean up spilled glitter.  His fingers closed around the bag.  Rhinestones, not glitter—Dipper let out a breath—but the bag wasn’t sealed properly.  If Dipper hadn’t met some of Mabel’s schoolmates, he would have made a comment about graphic design majors.

Instead, he moved the rhinestones to Mabel’s place at the table, along with the other craft supplies Mabel had left on the counter.  Passive aggression: the perfect reminder to put away her junk.  Nodding to himself, Dipper nudged Mabel’s closer to the table.  Her purse slipped off the back of the chair.  It spilled onto the tile.

“Crap,” Dipper muttered, glancing at the doorway into the den.  Mabel and Bill were busy laughing about something.  Dipper hastily gathered Mabel’s belongings back into her purse and checked her sketchbook, which had fallen open, for creases or tears. 

The page was covered with drawings of Shooting Star.

Dipper’s stomach curled.  That wasn’t old classwork.  Glancing at the doorway again, he peeked at the next page.  Shooting Star logos everywhere.

The microwave dinged.  Dipper closed the sketchbook and ran a hand over his face.  Okay.  Apparently Mabel was more invested in this superhero lady than Dipper had thought.  As he emptied the popcorn into a bowl, he swiped a container from Mabel’s not-so-secret stash of sprinkles and shook it over the popcorn.

The other room had gone suspiciously quiet.  Bill and Mabel looked up like startled animals when Dipper walked in.  He raised a brow.

“What’s going on?” he asked slowly.

“Nothing!” Mabel blurted, frantically waving her hands.

“Just watching TV!” Bill agreed loudly.  He patted the couch.  “Have a seat, Pine Tree!”

Dipper narrowed his eyes.  “Okay…”

He sat down between them, and Bill draped an arm over his shoulders.  Mabel scooted closer until their sides were pressed together.  Dipper squinted at each of them in turn as Mabel turned the channel to _Ghost Harassers_.

“Seriously, what happened?” he said.

“Nothing,” Mabel insisted, grabbing a handful of popcorn.  “Oh, hey!  Sprinkles!”

Dipper ducked his head and rubbed his neck.  “Yeah.  You seemed kind of down.”

“Er…maybe a little.”  Mabel stuffed popcorn into her mouth, chewed, and sent Dipper a small smile.  “Thanks, Dip-Dop.”

“Aww, what a good brother,” Bill cooed, giving him a squeeze and nuzzling his neck.  Laughing, Dipper squirmed away.  He caught Mabel giving Bill a weird look.

Bill and Mabel both stayed pressed up against Dipper throughout the episode.  As Dipper shook sprinkles off a piece of popcorn, he felt a hand on his thigh.  Bill’s leg nudged his.  With a furtive glance at Mabel, Dipper hooked his leg over Bill’s and settled closer to him.

“Leave room for Jesus, boys.”

Dipper sent Mabel an innocent smile.  Bill smiled, less innocently, and squeezed Dipper closer.  “Just getting cozy, Mabelline.”

“Don’t make me revoke the Badge of Sisterly Approval,” Mabel warned.  Using the arm around Dipper’s shoulders, Bill fished a handful of popcorn out of the bowl and crammed it into his mouth.  The movement pulled Dipper even closer to him.  “Hey!  I can see what you’re doing!”

“No idea what you’re talking about.  I’m just enjoying the popcorn.”  Bill shoveled in another handful, cheeks puffing out.

Mabel swatted his hand away when he reached for more.  “Dipper, your boyfriend is hogging my popcorn!”

“Uh, it’s _my_ popcorn,” Dipper said, shifting the bowl away from two pairs of grabby hands.  “You’re lucky I’m sharing with you— _dude!”_

A swipe from Bill nearly upended the popcorn.  Dipper jumped up and took the bowl with him.  When he turned around, both Mabel and Bill looked like toddlers reaching for a confiscated toy.

“Seriously, what’s with you guys?” Dipper demanded, holding the popcorn well out of reach.

“Nothing,” Mabel said.

“Society is collapsing,” Bill said.  Mabel sent him a sideways look, while Dipper rolled his eyes.

“Pipe down and watch the show.  I like this episode.”  Dipper sat down, and the two troublemakers pressed up next to him again.  A few minutes passed without incident.

“They know their ‘ghost’ is probably just an owl, right?” Mabel giggled at the TV.

Bill shushed her, covering Dipper’s ears with his hands.  “Spoilers!”

“I’ve _seen_ this episode, guys,” Dipper sighed, just as the owl burst out at the camera.

The resulting screams made Mabel jump, and Bill laughed.  She flicked popcorn at him.  They continued pelting each other until Dipper stuffed the last of their ammunition into his mouth.

~

The next day found Dipper in the gift shop, frowning over the register at his furiously-texting sister.  Between tours, Mabel had hardly spoken a word to him, although he had caught her looking at him with a creased brow and her lip between her teeth.  The two-minute transition from _that_ to smiles and bouncing and muffled squeals had Dipper reeling.

“Who’re you texting?” he called.

Mabel stopped bouncing in place, lowering her phone as if to hide it.  “Paz.”

“Good news?”

“Kind of,” Mabel admitted, her smile creeping higher.  Dipper would have probed for more, but then a familiar face waltzed into the gift shop. 

Bill tipped an invisible hat.  “How’s business, Pine Tree?”

“Hey, Bill.  Are you on break?” Dipper asked, checking the time on his phone.

“Yeah, my next shift doesn’t start ‘til six.”  Bill leaned against the counter.  His yellow contacts matched his bow-tie—accessories that weren’t explicitly forbidden in the coffee shop’s dress code, but which the manager hated.  Bill must have been in one of his moods.  “When do you have lunch?”

“Twelve, so…”  Dipper had to check his phone again.  “…in about fifteen minutes.”

“Good.  I have some additions for that chest plate.”  Bill dug a thick gold pen out of his back pocket and pulled off the cap, flicking a switch on the side.  The needle-tip buzzed.

“You brought your engraver to work?”

“Nah, I swung by my apartment before I came here.”

“You can go get the chest plate if you want,” Dipper said, motioning at the door into the shack.  “It’s on my desk upstairs.”

Bill disappeared into the shack, and Dipper turned back to the register.  Mabel was staring after Bill like he’d just left through the door to Hell itself.  When she saw Dipper’s raised brow, she fidgeted with her phone.

“Uh, maybe I should go with him,” she said.  “In case he gets lost.”

“He’s been here tons of times,” Dipper replied slowly.

Mabel eyed the door but didn’t argue.  Had she left something embarrassing out in the open?

Bill returned with the chest plate and perched on the counter, chatting with Dipper and remarking on the customers’ purchases.  After Dipper’s shift ended, Bill and Mabel followed him to the kitchen for lunch.

Dipper had eaten half his microwaveable burrito by the time Bill and Mabel stopped picking on each other long enough to get their food heated.  Bill pulled up a chair next to Dipper, close enough to press up against him.

Dipper raised a brow.  “You’re cuddly today.”

“Uh’m alway’ cuddly,” Bill replied with his mouth full.  He wasn’t wrong.  Dipper shrugged and leaned against him.

Mabel’s burrito disappeared like paper into a shredder.  So did the apple she dug out of the fridge.  She discarded two empty bags of peanuts and a granola bar wrapper on her way to the pantry, and then she proceeded to make herself a sandwich.  She paused when she saw Bill and Dipper staring.

“Um.”  She held up a knife capped with a glob of peanut butter.  “Did you guys want some?”

“Did you miss breakfast?” Dipper asked.

“No.”

Dipper glanced at the sandwich-in-progress, and Mabel shrugged, giving an awkward laugh.

“I’ve been eating more lately.  Been more active, y’know?”  She fidgeted with the knife.

“Good workout, eh?” Bill asked.

Mabel shot him a look like he’d said something insulting before she went back to her sandwich.  Dipper didn’t bother asking about it.

Dipper stayed at Bill’s apartment far longer than he meant to.  They were supposed to finish upgrading their DD n’ D figurines, but that didn’t get done.  Dipper blamed Bill.  Bill cheerfully agreed.

When Dipper got home, he checked the clock and groaned.  At least Mabel would be in the gift shop, where she couldn’t ask about Dipper’s damp hair or upturned collar.  Dipper sent Bill a text message on his way to his room.

_D: IT IS ALMOST 3. I was supposed to start working on my thesis an hour ago_

_SS3k: The shower was your idea_

_D: And then what happened in the shower, supreme sexlord 3000???_

_SS3k: Hey when life gives you a pole, you go fishing_

_D: We already went ‘fishing’. Hence the shower, you sexmonger_

_SS3k: You were pretty insatiable yourself, pine tree ;P_

_D: Still your fault :P_

_SS3k: Damn straight  
SS3k: *damn gay_

_D: I have a thesis to work on. Text you later_

_SS3k: Bi pine tree_

Shaking his head, Dipper opened the laptop on his desk.  He filtered through research articles for two peaceful hours.  (Hour three was less productive.  He got sidetracked by a theory which, despite being totally awesome, had nothing to do with his thesis.)  When he went downstairs for a snack, Mabel was in the kitchen.

Dipper adjusted his collar and glanced at the clock.  “Did your shift end early?”

“No, just grabbing a drink,” Mabel replied, pulling a water bottle out of the fridge.  She gulped down half of it in one go.  Dipper eyed the sweaty sheen on her face.

“Is it hot in there?” he started to ask, but he stopped and wrinkled his nose.  “Why do you smell like smoke?”

Mabel stiffened.  When she opened her mouth, water spilled down her chin.  Dipper snorted as Mabel clapped a hand over her mouth, swallowed, and cleared her throat.

“There was a superhero fight,” Mabel said.  She fiddled with the bottle cap and didn’t meet Dipper’s eye. “Somebody said Enkryptos was downtown, and Soos said I should go see if Shooting Star would show up, since, y’know, she always saves the day when Enkryptos attacks…”

Dipper frowned.  If Mabel could trust their boss to respect her interests more than she trusted her own brother—even if Soos was a hell of a lot more than just their boss—then Dipper had really screwed up.

“Uh, Mabel, listen,” Dipper interrupted, and Mabel hummed for him to continue, smiling politely.  Dipper winced.  That was her customer service smile.   “I know I was kind of a jerk when you first told me about Shooting Star.  I didn’t mean to—I mean, I didn’t know how much you liked her.  I’m sorry if I upset you.  She’s…”  Dipper cringed.  “She’s not as bad as I made her sound.”

Mabel blinked at him.  Then she hid a goofy smile behind her hands and her water bottle.  “Aw, Dip-Dop…”

“Just to be clear, I’m still not a fan,” he said quickly.  “That costume is really impractical, and the collateral damage…”

Dipper trailed off when he saw the flat look Mabel was giving him.  He cleared his throat.

“Awkward sibling hug?” he offered, spreading his arms.

“Awkward sibling hug,” Mabel smiled.  “You big sap.”

When they squeezed each other, Dipper gave Mabel their customary pat on the back.  Mabel patted the back of his neck with her ice-cold water bottle, laughed at the inhuman noise he made, and then froze.

She squinted at his neck.  “Is that…?”

Dipper furrowed his brow, but then his hands flew to fix his collar.  Mabel’s mouth dropped open.

“Oh my god,” she blurted out, one hand slapping over her face.  “Tell me that’s not a hickey.”

Dipper laughed, still adjusting his collar.  “It’s not a hickey.”

“Mason Dipper Pines—”

“Aren’t you still on shift?” Dipper asked.  Mabel narrowed her eyes.

“That had better be the _only_ hickey, young man,” she said, shaking her water bottle at him.

Dipper leaned against the table.  “This, coming from the girl who showed off her first hickey for days.”

Mabel blew a raspberry and marched back toward the gift shop.  “Just for that, I’m not telling you about the new message Enkryptos left today.”

Dipper jumped up so fast that the table scraped the floor.  “What?!  When?”

“Uh, ten or fifteen minutes ago.”

“Why didn’t you say so sooner?!”  Dipper sprinted to the front door and grabbed his shoes.  “You know I want to see one right after he leaves it!  Now I can figure out how he does the—the—”  Dipper made a frantic gesture with one hand, tugging his shoes on with the other.

“The whooshy fire thing?” Mabel called.

“Yeah, the whooshy—the thing where he makes the message with one shot!”  Dipper opened the door, closed it again, and ran upstairs for his keys.  He could hear Mabel laughing to herself.

“I’m going back to work,” she called after him.  “See you later!  Good luck!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The "Best-Laid Plans" are the ones you ignore so you can get laid. --Me, just now  
> The next chapter might take just as long to update. Sorry. I have a lot of details to nail down. Instead of offering me hacked-off limbs as tribute, you should visit me at doodling-dood.tumblr.com!


	4. Mabel - Shovel Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mabel's perspective, set during the second half of chapter 3.  
> This turned out WAY longer than I expected. Sorry about the wait.

_Paz: Are u serious_

_Mabel: Dipper is dating him paz wat do I do_

_P: Omg ur serious_

_M: I can’t make this stuff up  
M: Omg wat if that’s why dipper took so long to introduce us!!! THAT TRICKY TRICKY TRICKER KEPT PUTTING IT OFF SO HE CAN EXPLOIT MY BRO WITHOUT ME KNOWING_

_P: Wait how long has he known who u are?_

_M: Uuuuh I think he found out same time I did_

_P: So that’s a no on that theory_

_M: True but he’s still exploiting my bro  
M: And I will not stand for this_

_P: Does Dipper kno he’s dating a supervil?_

Mabel stared at her cell phone.  She shot a sideways look across the gift shop at Dipper, mouth and thumbs both working aimlessly around the blank in her head.

_M: No_  
_M: I don’t think so_  
_M: Oh gosh wat if he does_  
_M: WHAT IF THAT’S WHY HE HATES SHOOTING STAR???_

_P: U kno what nvm. New topic  
P: Wait don’t u have work today? Should I stop texting u?_

Mabel thinned her lips, side-eyeing the t-shirt display she’d been avoiding.  It looked like a laundry pile.

_M: Pls don’t leave me alone :,( I’m cleaning up after the morning rush. My faith in humanity is on the line_

_P: As long as u don’t get in trouble  
P: Do u work with 3d files?_

_M: I learned basic modelling n stuff. Why?_

_P: It’s cheaper to make a prototype toy w/ a 3d printing service before u go to a manufacturer_

_M: ASDFGHJKL IT’S HAPPENING_

_P: Yes it is_

_M: YASSSSS_

Dipper’s voice made Mabel jump.  “Who’re you texting?”

Mabel reflexively slid her phone across the stomach of her shirt, where her front pocket should have been.  The Mystery Shack t-shirt didn’t abide by sweater rules.  Fiddling with the hem, Mabel responded, “Paz.”

“Good news?” Dipper asked.

Mabel couldn’t hold back a smile.  “Kind of.”

The door swung open, and Mabel cranked up that smile to welcome the customer, only for it to dissolve like sugar into stomach acid.  Bill was too busy strutting up to Dipper to notice.

“How’s business, Pine Tree?” he smarmed.  Mabel stealthily opened her cell phone camera.

“Hey, Bill.  Are you on break?”  While Dipper checked his phone, Mabel snapped a photo of the two of them.  The image perfectly captured Bill’s shady grin as he leaned toward Dipper like he wanted to dangle him over a shark tank, or tie him to a railroad track, or— _or seduce him into becoming a villainous sidekick._

Mabel sent the image to Pacifica.  Her thumbs tap-danced across the screen.

_M: HE JUST WALKED IN LOOK_  
_M: He thinks he’s so slick. He’s wearing a YELLOW BOWTIE. D: < _  
_M: SLAP A GREASY MUSTACHE ON HIM! PERFECT VILLAIN EVEN WITHOUT A COSTUME_  
_M: >;^{D _  
_M: That’s him, that’s how he looks_

_P: Is that the guy from the coffee place?_

_M: You know him?_

_P: He’s this barista with weird eyes. He’s way too cheerful in the morning_

_Weird eyes?_ Mabel texted back just as Bill glanced in her direction.  She balked.  Since when were his eyes _yellow?_

_P: He wears like these yellow contacts sometimes. It’s creepy_

Dipper didn’t seem to notice the creep-tastic atmosphere rolling off of his boyfriend.  Mabel watched, horrified, as he sent Bill into the Mystery Shack unattended.

“Uh,” she said, “maybe I should go with him.  In case he gets lost.”

Dipper gave her a weird look.  “He’s been here tons of times.”

Mabel made a mental note to scour the Shack for hidden messages or surveillance equipment.

By the time Soos emerged from the museum with a tour group, Mabel had finished cleaning up the shelves.  She scooted aside to let a middle-aged couple paw through her stack of freshly-folded shirts.

“Hey, Bill.  Nice metal thing,” Soos said as he took Dipper’s place at the register.  “Dipper, Mabel, which one of you has the afternoon shift?”

Mabel raised her hand.  “That’s me.”

“Right, it’s a Mabel day.  See you in an hour, then.  Have a restful and nutritious lunch!”

With a salute, Mabel followed Dipper and Bill out of the gift shop.  She trailed behind when her phone buzzed.

_P: Do you have any experience with web design?  It would be good publicity if you kept a website with info about what you do, where the profits go, etc_

_M: I have a web designer friend who can help_

Mabel entered the kitchen just as Dipper held out a microwaveable burrito for Bill, who reached for the burrito, got distracted by Mabel, and made a spectacular fumble with both the burrito and the metal thing he’d been fiddling with.

The burrito flipped past Dipper’s face.  He caught it with a squawk.  “Dude!”

“Whoops.  Nice catch, Pine Tree.”

“Nice fumble, All-Star,” Dipper replied, pushing the burrito into Bill’s hand more firmly, this time.  Snickering, Mabel opened the pantry.  “Mabel.  Burrito?”

“Sure.”  She caught it one-handed when Dipper tossed it to her.  Grinning, she waved it at Bill.  He made a face.

“Tough luck, Bill,” Dipper chortled, sticking his burrito in the microwave.  Mabel shot Bill a smug look.  “You want to finish up the DD n’ D stuff today?  I’ve gotta work on my thesis project, but otherwise I’m free.”

Bill leaned again the table with a sigh.  “Aw, gee, I dunno.  I had so many plans.  Experiment with nuclear fusion, mass-produce one-dollar bills, legally change the United States’ name to something unpronounceable…”  He ticked each one off on his fingers.

“So, you’re free.”

“Free as a five-finger discount.  Is my place okay?  Just in case we need tools or supplies.  Or privacy,” Bill added, sliding his arms around Dipper’s waist.  Mabel shook her burrito at him threateningly.

Dipper snorted.  “Just remind me to grab the DD n’ D box before we go.”

He said it with the kind of smile reserved for phrases like “wear something sexy for me” or “let me change into something more _comfortable_ , wink, wink.”  Mabel immediately got a brainful of implications she never asked for.

“ _Ne-e-e-erds_ ,” she called (instead of crumbling under cringe-worthy images of her brother asking, completely straight-faced, for Bill to give him “the DD n’ D”).

Dipper opened his mouth just as the microwave beeped.  He retrieved his burrito with a grin.  “See what happens when you make fun of nerds?  You’ve got the microwave cussing you out.”

Blowing a raspberry, Mabel lobbed her burrito across the kitchen, straight into the microwave.  At least, it would have landed there if Bill hadn’t swatted it out of the way at the last second.

“Oh, and it rejects your food!  Technology has turned on you!” Bill crowed, sliding his burrito into the microwave instead.

Mabel squawked indignantly.  She took revenge by stopping the microwave three or four times while Bill’s food cooked.   Instead of returning the favor, Bill let Mabel use the microwave in peace, took a seat at the table, and made a show of pressing himself against Dipper.  Mabel ate her burrito a tad violently.

The boys left the kitchen before Mabel did.  She took out her phone as she started on her sandwich.

_M: Enkryptos is a nerd pass it on_

_P: As nerdy as dipper?_

_M: They both play ddnd_

_P: Nerds_

Stuffing the last of her sandwich into her mouth, Mabel strolled out of the kitchen.  Bill was alone in the den, poking through a cluster of craft supplies Mabel had moved to the coffee table.  Mabel narrowed her eyes.

“Where’s Dipper?” she asked, swiping a bag of rhinestones from him.

“Restroom.”

Glancing into the hallway, Mabel leaned closer and hissed, “Does he know about you?”

“Does he know about _you?_ ” Bill retorted, crossing his arms.  Mabel thinned her lips, and Bill grinned.  Mabel jabbed his chest with her finger.

“If you so much as _touch_ my brother,” Mabel started, but Bill cut her off with a snort.

“He’s my boyfriend, Shooting Star.  Touching happens.”  Bill spread his arms wide.  “C’mon, what are you gonna do, give me a firm talking-to?”

Mabel’s fist clenched around her bag of rhinestones.  They scattered shards of rosy light over Bill’s face as she held them up threateningly.  “I’ll bedazzle your super-suit pink.”

Bill recoiled, looking genuinely offended.  “Don’t touch my color scheme!”

“Don’t touch my brother,” Mabel shot back.  “I’ll slap pink and green and orange and purple all over your suit so you look like a color-blind disco ball, and then I’ll tell Dipper that it’s you.”

“You tell him about me, and I’ll tell him about you.”

Mabel balked.  “You wouldn’t.”

Raising a brow, Bill gestured at himself.  “Supervillain.”

They both stiffened at the sound of the toilet flushing.  As the bathroom sink turned on, Mabel exchanged looks with Bill.

“I won’t say anything if you don’t,” Bill offered.

“Deal,” Mabel said.  She darted up the stairs before the bathroom door opened.

~

The afternoon shift kept Mabel too busy to text Pacifica.  A tour bus full of elderly patrons shuffled into the gift shop, many of which couldn’t hear anything less than a shout.  One of them hunched over a portable radio the whole time.  The younger woman pushing her wheelchair wore a bright smile and dead eyes.

At the register, a hard-of-hearing old man insisted that Mabel had given him too much change, resulting in the most polite shouting match she had ever been a part of.  As the man shuffled away with his receipt, Mabel furrowed her brow.  Several people, including Soos and Melody, had paused in the middle of whatever they were doing, eyes glued to the woman fiddling with the radio.  Mabel leaned forward to listen.

Words barely slipped through the static—words like “Enkryptos” and “attacking” and “diner”.  Mabel almost vaulted over the counter before she stopped herself and power-walked around it like a normal person.  She rapidly tapped Soos’ arm.

“Hey, Soos, could you do me a _bi-i-ig_ favor?”

Soos whirled around and ripped off his eyepatch.  “Mabel!  I need a favor!  Shooting Star is gonna save the day any second now, and I have to get her autograph when she does!” 

“But—uh—” Mabel squeaked, hands fluttering around like they wanted to jump off of her wrists.  Shooting Star wouldn’t be able to save the day _or_ give out autographs if she had to stay in the gift shop and cover for Soos.  “Don’t you already—she-she signed your t-shirt, didn’t she?  The one you wouldn’t take off for days.”

“I washed it,” Soos said.

Mabel made a strangled noise.  “It was permanent marker!”

“This is no time to talk about the power of laundry detergent!  I need that autograph!”

Mabel’s mouth fluttered uselessly as Soos snatched an overpriced pack of metallic markers off of a shelf and ripped it open.  Then, he shoved his eyepatch and a gold marker at her.  Mabel stared blankly at them.

Soos herded her toward the door.  “You can take the golf cart.  Hurry!”

“What?” Mabel stumbled on the threshold.  “Oh, you—you want _me_ to go for you?”

“ _I_ can’t go.  I’m Mister Mystery!  And I have to pay for these markers,” he added, holding up the package.  Mabel would have hugged him if Melody hadn’t interrupted to hand her the keys to the golf cart.

“Can I get my bag?” Mabel started to ask, and Melody held it out for her.  Mabel beamed.  “You’re the best.”

Mabel waited until she was in the golf cart before she peeked under the sketchbook at the top of her bag.  Underneath, a bike helmet greeted her with a purplish glint.  Mabel turned the key in the ignition.

The golf cart whizzed toward the intersection near the diner, and Mabel watched the streets on her left—not there, not there, not there— _there_.  Enkryptos and his fancy gold boots strolled across the top of a parked car.  He didn’t even look up as Mabel sailed past the street.

Mabel parked on the next street, near the alley by the Skull Fracture biker joint.  She dug through her bag until she found the old hiking boots flattened at the bottom.  Swapping her shoes with the boots, Mabel jogged into the alley behind Skull Fracture.  There were no bystanders to see her fire a grappling hook up to the roof.  The hiking boots gripped the wall as she clambered up.

Getting changed with nothing to cover her but the open sky always made her nerves prickle.  It was safest up here, though—even safer than a nice, enclosed alleyway.  Mabel had been interrupted too many times by people looking for somewhere to pee or make out.

Up on the roof, Mabel unpacked her costume in peace.  Her desperately-in need-of-maintenance costume.  Mabel grimaced at the singed tassels on her helmet.

Tightening a set of stitches on the pink jumpsuit, Mabel pulled it on over her clothes.  The thing needed a wash.  It still smelled smoky.  Mabel put on the shin, knee, and elbow guards.  Next was the combination mask and hair net she’d knitted.  Then, the helmet.

Last—and this part that had Mabel grinning shamelessly every time—was her grappling hook.  Mabel picked it up, gave it a good luck kiss, and took off at a sprint.

Mabel reached the building behind the biker joint with a flying leap.  When she peeked over the edge of the roof, Enkryptos was still parading around on top of someone’s car.  Perfect.  Smiling to herself, Mabel fired her grappling hook at the nearest streetlight and jumped.

“ _MAKE A WISH!”_ she hollered.

Enkryptos looked up as Mabel swung into him.  To a soundtrack of cheers, her flying kick caught Enkryptos’ shoulder, hard enough to knock him off the car with the metallic clatter of armor on asphalt.  Mabel landed in something slick, arms flailing before her boots found a grip.  She squinted at the splatters of white foam.

“Is this soap?”

Enkryptos was laughing, voice distorted by a filter in his mask.  He brushed himself off as he got to his feet.  With claw-tipped fingers, he flicked aside the dark bangs the always dangled in front of his mask—bangs which Mabel now knew he kept slicked back as a civilian.

“Right on time, Shooting Star!  You ever see snow in summer?”  Enkryptos adjusted his belt, and Mabel narrowed her eyes at the nondescript black bag dangling from it, bulky and menacing.

“You didn’t bring me a Christmas gift, did you?” she asked.  Enkryptos waved his hand dismissively.

“Nah.  I’m all about the pagan stuff.  Gotta love winter music, though!  Don’tcha hate when you get a song stuck in your head, and it’s the wrong season for it?”  Enkryptos reached into the bag, and Mabel raised her guard as he took out… _something_.  It was white and cylindrical.  There wasn’t much else to go by.

“ _Oh, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so-o-o delightful…”_

Enkryptos tossed the white tube high in the air.  Mabel aimed her grappling hook at it on reflex—airborne projectiles could range from raw egg to flash bangs, and washing egg out of her costume was almost as bad as temporary blindness—but then she heard a familiar click.  Her mind hadn’t even formulated the word “flamethrower” before her body dove to one side.

“ _So if you’ve no place to go-o-o…”_

A few things happened at once.  The air heated.  Mabel somersaulted to her feet.  She saw the fire roaring from Enkryptos’ gauntlet, but it wasn’t aimed at her.  Instead, it enveloped the white tube.

And then it was snowing.

That is, if snow came in a toothpaste tube that someone decided to crush between two dumbbells, so that white fluff didn’t float gently down but _splattered_ everything within a thirty-foot radius—if snow happened like that, then yes, it was snowing.  It formed a fluffy blanket that someone’s distant ancestor had knitted, wrestled away from their dog, and then left draped over their cat’s scratching post.

“ _Let it snow, let it snow, let it sno-o-ow!”_ Enkryptos howled, twirling across the soapy ground.  He might have sounded pretty good, if not for the voice filter.  And the exaggerated, old-timey vibrato.  And the soap-splosion.

“Is…”  Mabel shook the scented lather from her arms.  “Is this _shaving cream?”_

“Need a closer look?”  Enkryptos took another white tube from the bag.

Mabel charged at him, but the slippery ground slowed her down enough for Enkryptos to launch the tube skyward.  Mabel fired her grappling hook.  Although it interrupted the tube’s arc through the air, Enkryptos still caught the thing in a burst of flame, and another burst of shaving cream followed.  Mabel sputtered, wiping her face.

“ _It doesn’t show signs of stopping, and I brought some corn for popping…”_   Enkryptos reached into the bag again.  Mabel retracted her grappling hook.  “ _Somethin’ somethin’ way down low…”_

As Enkryptos wound up to throw the tube, Mabel fired her grappling hook.  It bounced off of his mask.  He dropped the tube with a sharp noise that vaguely resembled a swear word, and he stumbled backwards, one foot sliding out from under him.  (It would end up on YouTube.  It _had_ to.  Mabel could watch that on repeat for hours.)  As he straightened his mask, Mabel charged at him again.

Enkryptos caught his balance in time to catch Mabel’s punches with his hands instead of his face.  He could thank his lucky stars for that—the grappling hook made a great bludgeon.  They braced against each other, struggling for traction on the soapy ground.

Enkryptos grunted as Mabel forced him back a step.  “Your workout routine sure works for you.”

“Thanks!”  Mabel shoved.  Enkryptos glided backwards but didn’t lose his balance.  “Gotta stay in shape so I— _oof_ —so I can keep all the tricky lowlifes away from sweet, innocent, too good for this world—”

Enkryptos laughed.  “If you’re talking about who I think you are, you have a funny definition of ‘innocent’.  And ‘sweet’.”

“ _Too good for this world_ —”

“He does put the ‘sin’ in cinnamon roll.”

“I’m gonna bedazzle your suit _so hard,_ you—!”

Before Enkryptos could fire off another smart remark—and make Mabel regret using the word ‘hard’, if that horrible grin was anything to go by—an insistent beeping cut into their conversation.  Enkryptos muttered an “oh.”  Mabel stumbled as he broke away.

“Sorry, kid!  Gotta bounce,” he chirped, moonwalking across the street.  He snatched up the tube he had dropped.  “Here—a little farewell present!”

Enkryptos tossed the tube before Mabel could stop him.  She shielded her face from the bursts of heat and foam that followed, and when she looked up, Enkryptos was jogging toward a telephone pole.

Mabel aimed her grappling gun at him.  “Not so fast, Old Man Winter—”

Enkryptos sped up and leaped, kicking his legs out in front of him like he was going to do a backflip off of the telephone pole.  He did not do a backflip.  He didn’t even land on the ground.  Mabel gaped, grappling gun in hand, as Enkryptos launched _fifty feet into the air,_ like a rubber ball someone had thrown at a wall.  Mabel could have sworn she saw the air ripple.

Twisting in midair, Enkryptos caught the edge of the nearest roof.  He pulled himself up and sent Mabel a mock salute.

“See ya, kid!” he called.  “Oh—one more thing!”

He pointed his flamethrower at the telephone pole.  Mabel let out an angry yell as he set it ablaze.

While Mabel sprinted to the nearest fire hydrant, Enkryptos cupped his hands over his mouth and delivered his signature farewell—“ _The universe is a hologram reality is an illusion buy gold bye!”_

Mabel ignored Enkryptos’ exit.  She crouched down by the fire hydrant and gripped the valve, twisting as hard as she could.  It didn’t budge.  Mabel ripped off her gloves and tried again.  She twisted and pulled and— _there_.

Little by little, the valve gave up its grip on the hydrant.  Mabel shouted for the gathering bystanders to stay clear, and water blasted the valve cap out of her hands.  Scrambling to her feet, Mabel ran to the stop sign, gave it a shake, and pulled it out of the ground. She grimaced as she struggled to balance the unwieldy thing. 

“These are bigger than they look,” she muttered.

After a few tries, Mabel found the right angle to deflect the water off of the sign, onto the telephone pole.  The fire retreated.  In its place, there was a mass of yellow, blue, and red scribbles.  Dipper would be excited to hear about that, but Mabel could do without the pyrotechnics that always came with Enkryptos’ messages.

When the fire was gone, Mabel heard people cheer.  A smile warmed her face.

Aside from being drenched, it was business as usual after that—sign a few autographs, pose for pictures, and answer the police officers’ questions.  Mabel returned to the roof of Skull Fracture with the warm buzzing that always followed a successful super-battle.  Dipper would call it endorphins.  Mabel called it savin’-day-rphins.

(She was still working on that.)

(And Dipper would actually call it something like “pride in a job _not_ well done” anyway, so it didn’t matter, did it?)

Mabel’s smile faded.  She stuffed her damp costume into her bag.  At least the fire hydrant had washed off the shaving cream.

Hydrant or not, Mabel’s mouth felt like the Sahara by the time she got back to the Shack.  Her body was so overheated that Soos’ welcome-back hug was uncomfortable.  While he admired the eye patch she had signed on her way back, Mabel excused herself to get some water.

Mabel’s phone buzzed in her pocket.  When she opened it, Pacifica’s name appeared on the screen.

_Paz: You were live on the news. Good work today._

Sparklers fizzed in Mabel’s chest, and she hid her face behind her phone.  No one had ever praised her— _her_ , Mabel—right after an outing as Shooting Star.  It was like coming home from work to a smile and a hug.

_Mabel: Did you make a wish?_

_P: ?_

_M: Since you saw a shooting star ;D_

It took Pacifica a long time to reply.

_P: You’re such a dork  
P: I don’t need a wish_

Practical to a fault.  That figured.  Mabel smiled and opened the fridge, shaking her head.  Dipper walked in as she pulled out a water bottle.

“Did your shift end early?” he asked.

“No, just grabbing a drink.”

“Is it hot in—?”  Dipper paused, brow furrowed.  “Why do you smell like smoke?”

_Again_ with the smoky smell.  Mabel had some choice words for Dipper’s pyromaniac boyfriend.  She accidentally spat out a mouthful of water before she could ramble through an alibi—and ramble she did, unless there was a better word for over-explaining a fake alibi.

_Lying_.  The word was lying, and Mabel was doing it poorly.

“Uh, Mabel, listen,” Dipper said.

Mabel stopped babbling, forcing a very casual, very relaxed smile onto her face.  Judging by Dipper’s expression, she wasn’t convincing.  At least her face was rigid enough not to give her away when Dipper started asking difficult questions.

But he didn’t.  He fumbled through an apology instead.  He said Shooting Star _wasn’t that bad_ , even if he insisted he still didn’t like her.  A firefly lit in Mabel’s chest.

Once her plans with Pacifica played out, Dipper might change his mind.  Then Mabel could tell him the truth about her.

(And also about Bill.  Screw that guy.)

When Mabel went back into the gift shop, she checked her phone one more time and found a message waiting, the timestamp set two minutes after the last one.  She blinked rapidly.

_Paz: I’d rather have a shooting star than a wish, I mean. I like those better_

Mabel couldn’t explain the fruity soda bubbles fizzing up from her stomach to her chest.  She reread the text several times.  She fumbled for a response several more.  She never came up with anything.  For the rest of her shift, Mabel daydreamed about holding a bright, glittering star between her hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I'm at doodling-dood.tumblr.com. *jazz hands*


	5. Dipper - Double Standards

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have some more world-building. Also, Dipper is 50% salt and 50% smartass commentary.

“Life imitates art,” Stanford Pines had said one night, roughly a week into Dipper’s month-long trip on the Stan O’ War.  The coast had long since shrunk behind the horizon like a sinking ship, but their conversations had drifted back to dry land—to Mabel, to the Mystery Shack, and to Gravity Falls.

And to the wave of self-proclaimed superheroes crashing over the United States.

“Life,” Ford had repeated, hauling a modified crab trap onto the deck, “imitates art.  The idea of taking justice into your own hands and pursuing an ideal, comic-book version of justice…  You can see the appeal.  Open this up, would you?”

Grabbing a screwdriver, Dipper had loosened the clamps holding the cage shut.  He had had to step back when a pair of squids flopped out through the opening.  The boat’s lamps had tinted their reddish skin orange.

“Too smart for their own good,” Ford had muttered.  The squids had stopped fighting over leftover bait to flail at him.

Dipper had bitten back a grin.  Once the squids had figured out how to get into the cages, they had tailed the Stan O’ War like children after an ice cream truck.  They had also figured out that someone would save them if they got reeled in.

Ford and Dipper had each prodded a squid with a pole until the animals had latched on.  Both men had grunted as they heaved the squids back into the water.  Groaning, Ford had rubbed his back.

“You okay?” Dipper had asked.  Stan had already been below deck with his back thrown out, shouting condemnation at the squids and setting new standards for foul-mouthed sailors everywhere.

Ford had waved off Dipper’s concern.  “I’m fine.  These red devils put too much faith in my good nature.  What was I saying?  That’s right—Dipper.  Can you tell me where this real-life superhero trend began?”

“It was that guy in Missouri, wasn’t it?” Dipper had said, dragging the cage toward the ice chest.  The smell of defrosting fish had gushed out when he opened the lid.  “The one who stood up to the riot police.  I can’t remember what he called himself.”

“That was the first instance of an _original_ superhero, and the movement certainly exploded after his debut, but no.  The first real-life superheroes were dressed up like fictional characters.”  Ford had pointed a scoop full of bait at Dipper.  “You remember the clown scare from a few years ago?”

“You mean the creepers running around scaring people, hiding in the woods and stuff?”

“Right.”  Ford had emptied bait into the cage.  “Did you know someone dressed up as Owl-Man to run them off?”

“I heard about that,” Dipper had replied, grinning.

“And that’s just one example.  Whether by coincidence or design, some people happen to be wearing costumes when they confront injustice.”

“But it used to be small stuff, like jerks making a scene in public— _bullies,_ mostly _._   Now, people are fighting actual crime like vigilantes.”

“A lot of people are disillusioned with the police and the justice system.  It’s an easy solution.  Unfortunately,” Ford had sighed, “the public forgets that _everyone_ is susceptible to corruption.  Superheroes are just as likely to abuse their power as police officers or politicians.  The masks just make it easier to avoid accountability—hence the emergence of super- _criminals_ , as well.”

“I’m surprised the federal government hasn’t stepped in.”

“They’re probably just being discreet.  Individual supers fall under local jurisdiction.”

“There’s one in Gravity Falls, now,” Dipper had put in, and Ford had thrown up his hands with an exasperated laugh.

“It was only a matter of time.  No shortage of weirdness in that town.  What’s this new superhero like?”

“Actually, he’s a super-criminal.”

Ford had grunted, closing the ice chest.  “Well, at least we know it’s not Stanley.  Hold the cage for me.”

“Small blessings,” Dipper had laughed.  “He calls himself Enkryptos.  I don’t think he’s hurt anybody yet—he mostly sticks to practical jokes—but he has a flamethrower attached to his costume, and he uses that every time he shows up.”

“Any special abilities?”

“I don’t think so,” Dipper had said slowly, mouth twisting.  “He’s done a couple of…I guess you could call them magic tricks.  Making stuff disappear and reappear in a different place, levitation, telekinesis…”

“Telekinesis?” Ford had interrupted with his brows raised high.

“More like ‘ _telekinesis’_.”  Dipper had punctuated it with air quotes, this time.  Ford had puffed a laugh and turned to retrieve the screwdriver.  “Knocking stuff over from a distance—small stuff.  I’m pretty sure it’s staged.”

“A showman, eh?  Gray hair, pot belly?  Looks just like me?” Ford had joked, and Dipper had snorted.

“No, dark hair.  Tall and lanky.  He wears this bright yellow armor and a mask he shouldn’t even be able to see through.  It’s literally just a triangle.  No eye-holes.”

There had been no response.  When Dipper had looked up, Ford had had his back to him, hand frozen over the screwdriver.  Dipper had stopped shoveling bait.

“Great Uncle Ford?”

Ford had whipped around, blinking like a dreamer waking.  “Ah—yes, the…  It must be—”  He had cleared his throat and hastily begun securing the clamps.  “It must be like a one-way mirror—the mask, I mean—so he can see out, but no one else can see in.”

“That would explain it.  His voice filter is probably in his mask, too.”

Ford hadn’t replied, eyes drifting over his work, hands moving robotically.  Dipper had chewed his lip.  To fill the silence, he had forced a laugh and said, “It’s too bad we don’t have a superhero in town to give him a beating.”

_“No,”_ Ford had cut in with surprising force.  “That’s what he wants—a big, flashy showdown.  Men like Enkryptos thrive on attention.  The only way to beat him at his game is to end it.  Make it anti-climactic.  Make it humiliating.”

Dipper had furrowed his brows.  “Like a boring arrest?  Police walk in, cuff him, and walk out?”

“That’s one option.  Then again, the Gravity Falls police force leaves something to be desired in terms of intelligence,” Ford had muttered, and Dipper had huffed a laugh.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t count on them decoding his messages.”

Ford had looked up, blinking.  “Messages?”

“Oh, I didn’t tell you!”  Out of habit, Dipper had checked his pockets for his cell phone.  It hadn’t been there, of course; electronics stayed inside the boat, safe from the elements.  “Enkryptos left a couple coded messages around town.  I’ll show you the pictures later.”

“Have you worked on them?” Ford had asked.

Dipper had nodded rapidly.  “There are thirty, uh…thirty- _five_ unique symbols, including the ones that have modifiers—twenty-something _not_ including the modified versions, so—”

“So you’ve got your alphabet.”

“Most of it.”

As Ford had looked at Dipper, _really_ looked at him, warmth had seeped into his creases and made them into smile lines.  A similar warmth had bubbled up in Dipper’s chest as a six-fingered hand clapped his shoulder.

“Next time I’m in Gravity Falls, I want to hear all about how my nephew defeated Enkryptos—no mask and tights necessary,” Ford had said, glasses glinting.

Dipper had beamed.  “Count on it.”

~

By the time Dipper thought to ask Mabel _where_ Enkryptos had left the newest message, he was already sailing up the road away from the Mystery Shack.  Swearing under his breath, Dipper pulled over and took out his phone to text Mabel.  She had beaten him to it.

_M: Message is on a phone pole near the diner btw :P_

With a sigh of relief, Dipper sped into town.  He almost missed the intersection.  Jerking to a halt, Dipper made a wide turn, sending a self-conscious glance toward the people clustered on the corner.  Wasn’t there supposed to be a stop sign?  Dipper checked his mirrors and drove toward the crime scene at a much lower speed.

He spotted the firetruck first.  It was parked across from the diner, right behind the police patrol car.  No lights or sirens—the crisis had passed, leaving behind news teams, wet pavement, and traces of white foam.  Dipper raised a brow as he parked.  This would be interesting.

Three firefighters loitered around a hydrant, where a fourth had a cartoonish-ly huge wrench attached to the nozzle.  A stop sign lay nearby.  One of the firefighters nudged it out of Dipper’s path as he jogged past.

“Shooting Star?” Dipper guessed, eyeing the stop sign.

The firefighter laughed.  “Yep.”

Dipper wrinkled his nose at the naked fondness in the firefighter’s tone, but he didn’t comment.  Up ahead, Sheriff Blubbs was wrapping caution tape around the base of a damp telephone pole.  Colorful symbols decorated the scorched wood.

Deputy Durland looked up from a clipboard as Dipper approached.  “Hey, it’s City Boy!  Haven’t seen you around lately.”

“I’ve been out of town with Grunkle Stan and Great Uncle Ford,” Dipper replied, taking out his cell phone.  He wrinkled his nose.  “Do you smell that?”

“What, the shaving cream?” Blubbs said.

“No, the—wait, shaving cream?”

“Enkryptos got it everywhere,” Durland said.

“What was he doing with—?”  Dipper stopped and shook his head.  “Not the shaving cream.  It smells like burnt plastic or something.”

Blubbs exchanged looks with Durland and shrugged.  “It’s probably from the flamethrower.”

Dipper grunted, taking out his cell phone.  He stepped back to get a few shots of the message.  “Have you guys had any luck decoding his messages?”

“I take a crack at it now ‘n then,” Durland said, holding up his clipboard.

Dipper thinned his lips at the half-filled blanks scribbled in the margins of an incident report, his tongue already hovering at the beginning of a sarcastic comment.  No surprises there.  The Gravity Falls police department hadn’t changed since he was twelve.

Instead of making a smart remark about Durland’s IQ, Dipper went on, “Do you guys think you’re close to catching Enkryptos?”

“No, no,” Blubbs replied.  (Dipper pushed down a flicker of satisfaction.)  “That’s Shooting Star’s job.  We just keep his crimes on record until she brings him in.”

Dipper wrinkled his nose.  “ _What?”_

“Did you see her today?  She almost had him!” Durland crowed.

Blubbs whistled.  “We oughta bring popcorn next time.”

“You know vigilantism is also a crime, right?” Dipper cut in, voice strained.  Blubbs and Durland looked at him blankly.

“Well…”  Blubbs adjusted his belt.  “As sheriff, I’m making an exception.  Shooting Star volunteered for a risky job so that we, the police, can continue to protect and serve the whole town.”

“She’s a real sweetheart,” Durland agreed with a fierce nod.

Blubbs put a hand on his shoulder.  “So are you, Durland.  So are you.”

“She’s butting in on _your_ job,” Dipper protested.  “Doesn’t that bother you?”

Blubbs laughed.  “Of course not.  What kind of insecure, defensive lowlife wouldn’t appreciate Shooting Star’s help?”

Dipper hunched his shoulders, face burning.  Rubbing his face, he took a deep breath in and out.  He ground his next words through his teeth.  “If Enkryptos gets caught, then Shooting Star’s job is finished.  Right?”

Blubbs exchanged looks with Durland, shrugging.  “I suppose.”

Dipper nodded curtly.  “How many of these messages are there?”

It took the officers almost ten minutes to jot down a list of six locations, including the two Dipper had seen before his trip.  While they discussed whether the messages counted as vandalism or arson, Dipper took one more picture of the phone pole, fired off a text to Bill, and left.  Bill met him at the message near the Mystery Shack.  (Meaning, he hid in a tree and pounced on Dipper like a hyperactive leopard.  Typical.)

“You got laid twice today.  How do you have this much energy?” Dipper snorted as Bill helped him up.

“It’s been a good day.”

Brushing himself off, Dipper turned to the symbols scorched into the tree.  He leaned closer and took a deep breath.  It smelled like charcoal, mostly, but Dipper caught remnants of the chemical odor that hung around the telephone pole.

“See something interesting?” Bill asked.

Dipper pointed at the tree.  “What does that smell like to you?”

Quirking a brow, Bill gave the scorched bark a sniff.  He wrinkled his nose.  “I dunno.  Burnt stuff.”

“Yeah, but it’s chemical.  Like—like melted plastic,” Dipper said.  “The message by the diner smelled like that, too.”

“Going around sniffing messages, are we?”

“There’s gotta be a method to his ‘message via fire’ trick.  I’m just picking up clues,” Dipper replied, taking out his cell phone.

Bill raised his palms.  “Hey, I don’t judge.  Who do you think came up with Sharpie sniffing?  Or glue sniffing?  Or nail polish sniffing?”

Dipper leaned back to keep his shadow out of the camera frame.  Under the reddish glow of the sunset, his phone captured a poor representation of Enkryptos’ colorful message.

“Enkryptos has been leaving way more of these than he used to.  Shooting Star must be great at stopping him,” Dipper remarked drily.

“She’s not bad,” Bill shrugged.  As Dipper inspected the message, Bill leaned against the tree trunk.  “Why do you hate her so much?”

“I don’t hate her.  I just don’t _like_ her.”

Bill made a skeptical noise.  “You talk more crap about her than Enkryptos, and he’s a supervillain.”

“Super-criminal.”

“Whatever.”

“And at least he’s a _competent_ super-criminal,” Dipper went on.  “Shooting Star leaves as much collateral damage as he does.”

“Does she?  Enkryptos will have to step up his game.”

Dipper snorted.  Pocketing his phone, he took Bill’s hand and began the walk back to the Mystery Shack.  Bill hummed something Christmassy.

“Hey,” Dipper piped up, squinting at Bill, “you _do_ know that Enkryptos is screwed if Shooting Star catches him.”

Bill raised a brow.  “Yeah.”

“Shouldn’t you be more, y’know, up in arms, Mister Number One Enkryptos Fan?”

Laughing, Bill shrugged.  “I like her.  She’s fun.  Plus, her costume matches her colors, which is always neat.”

“Her…?”  Dipper’s brow creased and then cleared.  He laughed.  “ _Oh_.  You mean your—what’s the damn word?—your color thing.  _Synesthesia_.”

“There ya go.”

“So, she looks the way she dresses?  All pink and yellow and orange?”

“Mostly, yeah.”

Dipper grunted.  “Bright and obnoxious, even without the costume.”

“Didn’t you used to like superheroes?” Bill asked.

“I changed my mind,” Dipper responded defensively.  When Bill gave a skeptical hum, Dipper insisted, “Wearing a mask is just a way to keep people from holding you responsible for your actions.  Besides,” he added, crossing his arms, “if I beat Enkryptos, I want full credit for it.  Forget that ‘mild-mannered alter ego’ crap.  I want him to have to live with the fact that he got taken down by—not by some bombastic superhero, but a small-town nerd with a freaking camera phone.”

Bill made a choked noise, shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter.

Dipper narrowed his eyes.  “What?”

“Remember in freshman year, when you—I made some stupid comment about, uh, combustion or something—and you did that huge midterm project just to prove me wrong?  And then—” Bill wheezed, kicking the pavement.  “You were—you burnt your eyebrows off, and you gave your presentation with no eyebrows, and you had burnt patches on your jacket and your arms, but you looked _so damn proud_ …”

Dipper gave Bill a shove, but he was laughing, too.  “You were a jackass.”

“I’m still a jackass, and you’re still a spiteful little shit,” Bill replied, slinging an arm around Dipper’s shoulders.

“Yeah, yeah.  What made you think of that?”

“I imagined you giving Enkryptos that smug look with a bunch of burns and no eyebrows.”  Bill covered his brows and puffed out his chest, looking down his nose at Dipper.

“I will,” Dipper shot back.  “Watch me.  I will.”

“I’ll look forward to it.”

The crafty tilt to Bill’s smile resembled Ford’s, if only a little.  They both looked at Dipper like he had already won.  Dipper’s steps quickened.  He had a code to crack.

(He had to beat Shooting Star.)

Dipper kissed Bill goodbye in the doorway of the Shack—a good, lingering kiss with a flicker of tongue.  He saw Bill’s eyes dart behind him as he withdrew.  When Dipper closed the door and turned around, a flash of brown hair vanished around the corner.

Oh.  Dipper cleared his throat and called, “I’m back!” like he couldn’t hear Mabel tiptoeing down the hall.   Her reply drifted from the kitchen.  She was at the table, hunched over her sketchbook, when Dipper walked in.

“You were gone for a while.  Whatcha been up to?” Mabel asked, twirling her pencil.  Dipper leaned against the table.

“Taking pictures of Enkryptos’ messages.  I should’ve done it when there was more light,” he added, wrinkling his nose at his phone.

Mabel hummed.  “There’s probably pics online.  Check Facebook.”

Dipper brought his laptop from his room to the kitchen to do exactly that.  Mabel’s pencil hovered over her sketchbook, twirled, and tapped her chin.

“So,” she said, sounding about as casual as a cinched corset, “you ran into Bill at the crime scene?”

Dipper raised his brows at her over the top of his computer.  “I met up with him after I left the crime scene.”

“Oh.”  Mabel deflated.  “Then you guys, uh…”  She shrugged.  “You went on a date or something?”

“We went out in the forest and had sex.”

Mabel’s pencil flipped out of her hand.  Her mouth hung open as the pencil clattered to the floor.  Dipper burst out laughing.

_“Dipper!”_  Mabel kicked him under the table.

Dipper kicked her back, scrolling cheerfully through a set of images.  “We went to see the other messages, Mabes.  I told you I wanted pictures of them.”

Huffing, Mabel got up to retrieve her pencil.  “Jerk.”

“Yeah, yeah.”  Dipper clicked the “Print” button.  As the printer whirred in the study, he slid out of his chair.  He paused in the doorway.  “Oh, uh…  Can I borrow your colored pencils?  I just need yellow, red, and blue.”

Mabel waved a hand.  “Sure.  I’ll get ‘em.”

Up in his room, Dipper sat down with the colored pencils, opened his notebook, and spread the printouts over his desk.  The two earliest messages had each consisted of three columns.  He had thought that that meant Enkryptos’ messages were meant to be read vertically, like the hieroglyphics they resembled.

Now, Dipper wasn’t so sure.  The newer messages took a variety of shapes to fit wherever they were written—crowding the back of a public mailbox, playing Tetris between cracks in the sidewalk, and, yes, stacking columns on a telephone pole.

Dipper frowned and leaned forward.  In every message, the far left symbol in the top row was yellow.  He checked the bottom right corner of each message, grinned, and scribbled in his notebook.

  * _First symbol = yellow_
  * _Last symbol = red_
  * _Read rows left to right_



With a pleased huff, Dipper sat back in his chair.  Enkryptos hadn’t even bothered to ditch the standard English reading format.  Decoding his messages would be a piece of cake now that Dipper had more than two samples.

Dipper leaned over the printouts again, chewing his pen.  He jotted down one more note.

  * _Colors have 1:1:1 ratio_



Dipper flipped to a new page and began copying down a list of symbols.  This would be a piece of cake.

~

At four in the morning, Dipper brought up a picture of Enkryptos on the internet, leveled bloodshot eyes on his smirking, victorious face, and raised two middle fingers.  Then, Dipper laid his head down on a pile of crumpled paper failure and passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: Bill's "color thing" is closer to ideasthesia than synesthesia. It's linked to concepts (social information, in his case) more than sensory input. Also, the way he perceives people affects what colors he associates with them. Before he finds out Mabel is Shooting Star, for example, Bill doesn't associate the exact same colors with both of them. They're similar, though.  
>   
> Fun fact #2: the squids Dipper helps Ford relocate are Humboldt squids. They grow to about six feet long, and they're infamous for attacking people. (That's mostly when they're eating or being hunted, though, which makes sense tbh.) They come closer to the surface at night to catch food.  
>   
> Fun Fact #3: Blubbs and Durland are full of crap. They totally got defensive and territorial when Shooting Star first showed up, but she sweet talked her way into their hearts. Now they're her biggest fans.  
>   
> Shout-out to Django, whose comment on Chapter 2 got me to put more thought into Dipper's motives. I appreciate all the comments and critiques!


	6. Bill - Drama Llama

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some light bondage in this chapter, plus some unhealthy behaviors. Check the end notes for details.  
> Also, as stated in previous endnotes, Bill's synesthesia is more like ideasthesia--he associates colors with social cues, not sensory information.

Bill traced the birthmark on Dipper’s forehead with his thumb.  Although Dipper didn’t open his eyes, he leaned into the touch, and his legs squeezed Bill’s.  Bill dragged his thumb across the ridge of Dipper’s brow and down his temple, toyed with the curls by his ear, traced the sandpapery jawline and the parted lips—soft, if a little chapped.  Still wet and red.  Bill saw them twitch as his hand settled against Dipper’s neck.

As far as Bill was concerned, any afternoon spent in Dipper’s bed deserved a gold star— _two_ gold stars if they dug the “bag of fun” out of the dresser.

Even if Dipper had been half-asleep when Bill met him in the gift shop.  Even if Dipper had protested that he didn’t need a nap, bristling muted reds and violets as Bill led him up the stairs.  Honey-gold laughter had bubbled out when Bill wrestled him into the unmade bed.

“Look, it’s night!”  Bill had tossed a blanket over Dipper’s head.  Dipper had sputtered, swatting the blanket aside.  “Go to sleep, Pine Tree!”

Mischievous green had flickered beneath the stubbornness when Dipper said, “Make me.”

Cue some light necking, throw in an innocuous strip of fabric from the bag of fun in Dipper’s underwear drawer, and Bill was playing body pillow for a sleepy little pine tree.  Dipper’s bed?  Check.  Bag of fun?  Check.  Two gold stars.

(Even if sitting still for more than ten minutes made Bill’s spine itch.)

Footsteps drifted closer from somewhere in the Shack, but Dipper’s warm body and mattress dulled everything outside the bedroom.  Bill didn’t move until someone knocked on the door.

“Dipper?”  Mabel’s voice made Bill lift his head off the pillow.  “You in there?”

Dipper blinked his eyes open, hazy but clearing.  His voice was rough.  “Yeah.  Uh, don’t come in,” he added hastily.

Bill let out an amused puff and kissed the strip of fabric knotted around Dipper’s wrists.

The shadow under the door shifted back and forth.  “Can I get my colored pencils back?”

“Yeah, hang on.”  Dipper glanced over his shoulder.  “Bill, could you…?  They’re on the desk.”

“Sure,” Bill said, untangling their legs.  He sat up with a groan and climbed over Dipper, his hands fumbling sleepily to smooth his hair and button his pants.  He didn’t bother to do the same with his shirt.

The colored pencils were all in the box except for three—the yellow, light blue, and red ones.  Those were lined up next to a pile of papers covered in Enkryptos’ code, looking gently chewed at the flat ends.  Bill’s mouth curled as he put them away.

Mabel’s gaze darted to Bill’s open shirt when he opened the door, blocking her view of the room.  She narrowed her eyes.  Smiling innocently, Bill handed her the colored pencils.

“Thanks, Dipper,” Mabel called.  She pointed from her eyes to Bill in the universal gesture for “I’m watching you” as she walked away.  Bill waved.

As Bill closed the door behind him, he found Dipper watching him drowsily, clothes still mussed and wrists still bound.  Bill’s smile widened.  If Mabel had seen this, she would have kicked his ass for sure.  Whether that was better or worse than leaving it to her imagination…well, that depended on how dirty her mind was.

“What are you smiling at?” Dipper asked, sounding amused.

“I never get tired of seeing you like this.”  Bill climbed back into bed and flopped down next to him, popping the button on his pants back open.  He nuzzled Dipper’s hands.  Dipper’s eyes slid shut as he pressed up against Bill.  “Going back to sleep?”

“I wasn’t sleeping.”

“Just enjoying yourself?”

Dipper hummed, his mouth curling as Bill ran a hand up his shirt.  He’d put on some muscle in the month he’d been gone.  It would soften without the rigor of sailing, but in the meantime, Bill gave Dipper’s abdomen an extra appreciative squeeze.

Dipper giggled, squirming.  “Looks like you’re having fun, too.”

“Gotta appreciate it while it lasts,” Bill replied.

“Don’t objectify me,” Dipper snipped, but he looked flattered as ever when Bill felt up his biceps and shoulders.  His hands wandered to Bill’s chest.  “You got more muscle-y too, didn’t you?  It was hard to tell at first.”

Bill shrugged.  He _had_ been more active as Enkryptos since Shooting Star showed up.  “I’ve been doing more heavy lifting at work.”

Dipper grunted, busy exploring Bill’s pecs.  Bill flexed playfully.  Dipper laughed.

“Question,” he said.

“No, they’re not implants.”

Dipper snorted.  “Uh, no.  What do you think Enkryptos uses the colors for in his code?”

Bill bit his tongue, frowning.  “Uh…”

“My best guess is that each color is a separate alphabet,” Dipper went on.  “One symbol could stand for three different letters if it’s written in three different colors.”

“Makes sense,” Bill said, mouth twitching.

“I’ve seen other modifiers on different symbols—there are a couple that look like punctuation, so I mark those down separately, but the other modifiers—I mean, they _could_ be a separate alphabet, too…”

“What kind of modifiers?”

“Like dots and—here, let me show you.”  Dipper started to sit up.  “Oh, um…”

He looked at the binding around his wrists.  Bill sat up and undid the knots, giving Dipper a lingering kiss before he unwound the fabric.  Dipper made a soft, appreciative sound against his mouth.  When Bill started to press him into the mattress, Dipper laughed and kicked his legs until Bill let him up.

“Let’s see these modifiers,” Bill said, stuffing the fabric back into the bag in the dresser.

Dipper scooted a stack of papers off a notebook on his desk, flipping through the pages as he took it back to Bill.  The bed bounced when he sat down.

“Here.”  Dipper pointed at a pair of columns labelled _ORIGINAL_ and _MODIFIED._  “See how they’re almost identical?”

Bill did see.  Each modified symbol—Bill liked to call them capital letters, but who was he to ruin Pine Tree’s fun?—had a dot or two added to it.  He counted the letters and frowned.  Dipper was missing a few.  Bill had definitely used the letter I, capital _and_ lowercase.

“These are all the symbols you’ve seen?” Bill asked.  Blue-green relief pooled in his chest when Dipper shook his head.

“This is just the modified ones.  I’ve got a full alphabet back here,” Dipper said, flipping backwards in the notebook.  Bill leaned forward.  “I marked down how many times each symbol shows up, whether there’s a modified version, what colors it’s been written in…”

“So _that’s_ what these are.”  Bill tapped the colored dashes next to the symbols.

“There are more than twenty-six different symbols, even when you take out the modified versions, so some of them have to be punctuation or something.  This one obviously looks like an apostrophe…”  Dipper pointed to a small, slanted V-shape.  Bill nodded faintly.  Then, Dipper pointed to a pair of dots that looked like a colon.  “…but this one might be a modifier, not a symbol by itself.  It’s always the same color as whatever comes before it, which—see, this apostrophe thing is always yellow, so there has to be a difference.”

Bill hummed, mouth curling.  “How much time have you spent on this?”

Dipper looked up at the ceiling like he was thinking, and then he puffed out a laugh.  He rubbed his neck.  “More than my thesis paper.”

_“Pine Tree.”_

“Oh, shut up.  Where’s _your_ thesis?”

Bill blew a raspberry, pawing through the crumpled papers on Dipper’s desk.  He smoothed one out and pursed his lips.

Dipper’s shoulder bumped Bill’s as he leaned closer.  “See something?”

Bill hummed, tapping a symbol.  “I bet that’s an ‘I’.”

“Which one?” Dipper asked eagerly, but he stopped when he saw the symbol Bill was pointing to: an _eye_.  “Seriously?”

“You don’t know that it’s _not,”_ Bill grinned back. 

Dipper closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.  Even though the reddish-orange irritation was too dull to be genuine, a familiar mahogany clouded the gesture.  Just put a pair of glasses on him, and—

“You wanna grab some food now that you’re up?  I’ve got the munchies something fierce,” Bill said.

Dipper led the way downstairs.  Mabel was on the living room couch with a young blonde, who Bill didn’t recognize until she looked up and turned off the screen of the tablet they’d been hunched over.  She was wearing a sweater with a llama on it.

“Oh, hey, Pacifica,” Dipper said, ruling out the possibility of a look-alike.  “I didn’t know you were here.”

“That explains why you didn’t come running to see me,” Pacifica replied drily.

Dipper didn’t miss a beat.  “Yeah, I usually don’t let evil spirits hang around this long.  Mabel must have turned off the alarms.”

“She bribed me with sprinkles,” Mabel grinned, leaning against Pacifica.

Bill had thought he’d imagined it before, when he’d just walked in, but now it was definitely there: Pacifica showed flickers of the pinks and oranges he’d come to associate with Mabel.  She still wore the haze of dull, condescending mint that she usually did, but Mabel’s colors peeked through like stars.

That was common when people spent time together.  It was still jarring to see on Pacifica Northwest—jarring enough that Bill didn’t immediately catch her eyeing him the same way he’d been eyeing her.

Dipper noticed more quickly.  “Oh, yeah, I don’t think you guys have met.  This is my boyfriend, Bill.”

“Pacifica Northwest,” she said.  It came out steeped in the bruise-like maroons and violets of hypothermia, more threat than greeting.  When Bill shook her extended hand, Pacifica squeezed hard enough to make his bones creak.  “I know who you are.”

In the split-second pause that followed, Bill’s gaze darted to Mabel.

Then, Pacifica continued smoothly, “You work at the coffee shop downtown.”

Oh, this bitch was good.  She had to go.

“That I do,” Bill replied just as smoothly, although irritation flickered orange in his temples.  “Bill Cipher.  Nice to meetcha, Llama.”

Pacifica blinked rapidly at him.  When Bill nodded at the pattern on her sweater, Pacifica’s mouth thinned into a flat line.

“ _Pacifica,”_ she said through clenched teeth.

“Whatever you say, Llama.”

Dipper, who looked flat out _delighted_ by the exchange, led Bill away by the hand.  Bill made a mental note never to call Llama by her real name again.

~

Late afternoon found Bill behind an empty warehouse, prying open a loose panel.  He took off his shoes and tossed them into the crawlspace.  The briefcase he’d brought with him waited at his feet, and he hooked his fingers under the false bottom.  Yellow plating glinted underneath.

Bill grinned.  It had been a pain in the ass to make the armor collapsible, but it had been worth it.  Stuffing his shirt into the briefcase, he pulled the black jumpsuit on over his pants and attached the armor.  He flipped a switch on the mask.  Static crackled when he blew into the microphone.

Once he’d put on the mask, Bill pulled a smaller bag of supplies out of the briefcase and hooked it to his belt.  He wedged the briefcase into the crawlspace.  About ten years ago, he had been able to wedge himself inside, although the loose panel wouldn’t close all the way.  He would have been a hide-and-seek champion if it wasn’t so fun to jump out at people.  Smiling to himself, Bill replaced the panel.  Then, he followed the back alleys toward the Northwest estate.

There were no rules to this game.  There was nothing wrong with making sure Llama knew that.

(It would be clear that this wasn’t a threat, right?  Threats were cheap.  Painting a bright yellow eye on her house carried a message, but it would probably come across as “I’m watching” rather than “Enkryptos was here”.  Maybe he should’ve gone with a triangle.)

(Eh, whatever.  He was a super-villain.)

Bill had to take off his gloves to climb the fence.  A La-La-Launcher—known as a “roving launch pad” in uncreative circles, or a “gravitational anomaly” in very uncreative circles—would have been helpful.  The one near the diner had launched him two stories into the air.  Shooting Star’s face had been a joy to behold.

Then again, it had been a mathematical nightmare to predict _when_ the La-La-Launcher would be active, its _exact_ position, and whether the moon was close enough to interfere with it and fire Bill straight into orbit.

Bill didn’t see any security cameras on his way through the Northwest gardens.  Too bad.  He’d brought stickers to put on the lenses.  If there were cameras, they were probably inside the mansion, which meant he’d have to watch out for windows.

An outcropping near the eastern corner of the mansion made a perfect target.  It hid Bill from prying eyes as he dug around in the bag hooked to his belt.  Three cans of spray paint jostled inside—translucent, although they would turn colors once exposed to the oxygen in the air.  In the few seconds before the oxygen did its job, though, the paints might as well have been invisible.

Bill usually sprayed sealant over his messages to keep them that way.  Then, he could come back later, burn away the sealant with his flamethrower, and boom—magically appearing messages, written in flame resistant paint!

(It hadn’t been flame resistant the first time.  Man, _that_ had been embarrassing.)

Bill had left the sealant at home for this particular message—he wasn’t coming back to this one—so he’d finish it quickly.  The Northwests wouldn’t know what hit ‘em.  Unfolding the stencil he’d prepared, Bill flattened it against the outcropping.

“I’d say I was surprised,” said a bored voice—Bill’s head jerked up to see Pacifica Northwest leaning out a second-story window, oozing so much gray-green condescension that she could have painted her house with it—“but that would be giving you too much credit.  This is, like, sad.”

Hiding his irritation behind a smile, Bill leaned against the wall.  “Well, well, well, well!  If it isn’t Llama!  What brings you to this corner of the estate?  Thinking about expanding?  It doesn’t represent the Northwest ego just yet, but…”  He snorted.  “…even you couldn’t afford enough property for that.”

Pacifica wrinkled her nose.  She wasn’t wearing the llama sweater anymore, Bill noted.  “Whatever.  Since you’re here anyway, I might as well say something.”

“No, no, I’ll go first,” Bill interrupted, waving his hands.  He took a deep breath.  _“‘Something.’_  A’ight, your turn.”

Pacifica delivered the most expressive scoff and eye roll Bill had ever seen.  “As I was saying, let’s make one thing clear: if Shooting Star gets seriously hurt because of you, you’re finished.”

“Are all your threats this vague?  Gimme the grimy details!  Are you gonna pelt me with gold coins?  Sic your lawyers on me?”

Pacifica’s mouth thinned into a hard line.  “Maybe the cops will get an anonymous tip about your secret identity.”

“ _No_.”  Bill clutched his chest.  “You wouldn’t _dare_ get me arrested for doing illegal things like property damage and vigilantism—no, wait.  That’s the _other_ costumed super-freak.  What was her name again?”

Pacifica’s hands curled into fists, and she opened her mouth, but Bill went on before she could get a word in, “I mean, I’m not responsible for _all_ the property damage out there.  I’ve certainly never opened a fire hydrant without authorization.”

“Which is totally the same as arson,” Pacifica said drily.

“I never said her résumé was impressive, ‘specially compared to chaos incarnate.”  Bill took a bow, flourishing.  “So!  You snitch on me, I snitch on her, nobody wins.  Next threat!”

For a long moment, Pacifica stood with her shiny pink nails digging into her arm, while a pale green film washed out the sharp purples swirling around her.  Bill’s mouth twitched.  She was so fake.  She was trying so hard to mix cool indifference into her palette that the whole thing looked muddy.  The only time her colors hadn’t looked like that was when Bill saw her with Mabel.

So it startled the hell out of him when a deep, determined mahogany spilled past everything else.

“I’ll make Shooting Star’s secret identity public,” Pacifica said.

Bill stared at her.  The clenched fists and straight posture explained nothing, but it did show she was serious.  He made an aimless gesture.  “Excellent deterrent.  I am very deterred.”

“You don’t get it.”

“Not at all.”

Pacifica sighed like a calculus teacher talking to a slow child.  “Everybody likes Shooting Star.  _You_ like Shooting Star.  Before she showed up, you didn’t make nearly as much trouble as you do now.  You obviously like having somebody else to play your little game, or whatever.  If I turn her in, it’s game over.”

“Game over for her, maybe.  You’d get your own friend arrested?”

“Oregon offers a full pardon to vigilantes who turn themselves in.  Arresting superheroes is, like, bad for re-election prospects, I guess,” Pacifica added, rolling her eyes.  “And as manager of the Shooting Star Foundation—”

“The _what?”_

“—I can represent her by proxy.  They’ll treat it like she turned herself in personally.”

Bill huffed his amusement, shaking his head.  “Sharp as hell, aren’tcha?  Well, except for one thing—the reason you’d have to turn her in by proxy.  Shooting Star would never agree to it.”

Pacifica’s jaw tightened.

“So, that’s another option out the window.” Bill mimed tossing something over his shoulder.  “What else ya got?”

“You don’t think I’d do it?” Pacifica said, eerily calm.

Although she wouldn’t see it through the mask, Bill raised a brow.  “Well, if you’re okay with destroying your friendship with her, I won’t stop you.  Her trust, shattered!  Her heart, mangled!  Her smile, stomped to dust under a thousand stilettos!  Everybody’s got limits, kid!  Do you think she’d ever forgive you for betraying her like that?”

“It doesn’t matter.”  Thick mahogany bled into Pacifica’s voice, and Bill had to fight to keep his grin.  “I’m not like Ma—Shooting Star.  I’m a _rich girl_.  I get what I want,” Pacifica sneered.  The mint green flickered to something bitter and ironic.  “If she gets hurt, _really_ hurt, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep it from happening again.  It doesn’t matter if she hates me for it.”

Bill’s smile slipped away from him.  Flicking at an invisible speck of dirt on her blouse, Pacifica stepped away from the window.

“Oh, by the way…”  She waved a hand at the stencil on the outcropping.  “You can leave a code or whatever if you want, but I’ll just have it painted over in, like, ten minutes.  It won’t get reported or anything.”

With a flick of her hair, Pacifica closed the window and walked away.  Bill didn’t even get to respond.  He glanced at the stencil, his hand hovering at his knapsack, but she had even sucked the joy out of that.

This bitch had to _go_.

~

While Bill dug his shoes and briefcase out of the crawlspace behind the warehouse, his phone vibrated.  He took off one of his gloves to use the touchscreen, opening a text message from Dipper.  A familiar image appeared onscreen.

“Finally,” Bill muttered, a grin creeping over his face.

_Pine Tree: I JUST FOUND A NEW MESSAGE FROM ENKRYPTOS BEHIND THE MUSEUM_

While the message wasn’t exactly new—Bill had left it weeks ago, back when he thought subtlety was the best course of action—it had gone undiscovered for far too long.  It was good to have a smart guy poking his nose around town again.

Bill started to type a reply, but a spark of cyan and yellow made him pause.  The museum wasn’t far, and Dipper would probably stick around to inspect the message for a bit.

Bill stuffed his belongings back into their hiding place.  He had one more stop to make.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Light bondage: Bill ties Dipper's hands while they cuddle. It's consensual.  
> Unhealthy behaviors:  
> 1) Bill goes to Pacifica's house to leave graffiti. It could be interpreted as a threat, although Bill sees it as part of the "superhero game" .  
> 2) Pacifica shows overprotective tendencies. She tells Bill that she will do whatever it takes to protect Mabel, including revealing Shooting Star's identity without permission.
> 
> Come check out my Tumblr, doodling-dood, for more info and art related to this fic.


	7. Mabel - Public Image

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shortest chapter so far, but it took forever to finish because life is a shit-show. Yaaay.  
> I know you peeps were looking forward to Dipper meeting Enkryptos, but in the words of Dav Pilkey: "before I tell you that story, I have to tell you this story..."

The colored pencils rattled in the box as Mabel descended the stairs.  When she rounded the corner into the den, Pacifica looked up from Mabel’s sketchbook.

“Something wrong?” she asked.

Mabel sat down next to her on the couch.  “Did you hear any weird noises when you got here?”

Pacifica frowned.  “Uh, no.  It’s been pretty quiet.”  When Mabel sent a doubtful glance toward the stairs, Pacifica pressed, “Why?”

“It kinda looked like they were in the middle of something.”

“Ew.”

“ _Super_ ew.  Maybe we didn’t hear them over the washing machine.  Oh, before I forget…”  She jumped up.  “I think the dryer stopped.  B.R.B.”

When Mabel came back, she handed a warm, detergent-scented blouse to Pacifica.  “No stain, as promised!”

“Are you sure?”  Pacifica held up the blouse, inspected it closely, and slumped against the couch with a sigh like a deflating balloon.  Her borrowed sweater made her look more relaxed than Mabel had ever seen her—when she was awake, at least.  “God, you are a _lifesaver.”_

“Anytime, Citizen,” Mabel chirped.

Pacifica sent her an unimpressed look.  “Just don’t spill again.”

Mabel blew a raspberry, but she nudged a bottle of bright red Croco-ade away from the edge of the side table.

“Ooh, ooh, before I forget!  About the website…”  Mabel pulled out her phone and scrolled through the images.  “I found something I want to use for the header image.”

“Oh my god, if it’s the one with—”

Mabel held up the candid shot of her grappling hook hitting Enkryptos square in the face.  “My pride and joy.”

“Mabel, I love you, but your front page needs to look professional.”

“There’s a gif, too,” Mabel added, swiping to the next image.

Pacifica paused to watch the animation loop, her mouth frozen around whatever she was about to say.  “Is that, like, high definition?”

“Three hundred DPI,” Mabel said.

Flattening her lips together, Pacifica took a breath.  “Maybe you could use it for the ‘Achievements’ page.”  Mabel pumped her fist.  Pacifica rolled her eyes.  “You do know you don’t need my permission, right?  It’s your website.”

“Yeah, but you’re good at public image stuff.  If I can get the green light from you, I can get the green light from anyone.  So, brutal honesty hour!”  Mabel tapped the sketchbook in Pacifica’s lap.  “Whaddya think?  Too much?  Not enough?”

Pacifica huffed.  “The design looks great, but you still need more protective gear.”

“I _did_ add some,” Mabel protested.

“Shoulder pads?”

“And wrist guards!”

“Did you take a look at riot police gear like I told you?  Body armor, Kevlar?”

“Yeah, but…”  Mabel made a face.  “Even the cheap stuff is like seventy bucks.  I’ll just add more padding.”

“Oh my god, Mabel, shut up and take my money.”

Mabel’s brows shot up.  “Was that a meme?”

“You can’t prove anything,” Pacifica replied, suddenly occupied with her tablet.  “Let’s start with the vest.  I’m seeing plenty of brands to choose from.  Police- or army-grade would be best.  It’ll have to be flame resistant, too, so—what are you doing?”

Mabel didn’t look up from her phone.  “Telling Memelord Candy that she’s rubbing off on you.”

Pacifica lunged at her.  Cackling, Mabel jerked backward and braced her knee against Pacifica’s ribs, holding the phone out of her reach.  Pacifica pushed herself over Mabel’s leg.  She landed on top of her, punching startled grunts out of them both.  Mabel kept her arms stretched far away from Pacifica’s swiping hands.

_“No,_ Mabel don’t you dare—!  _She will never stop sending me that stupid squirrel picture_ _!”_

“Oh, that’s so sad!  Alexa, play—oof!  Nails! _Nails!”_ Mabel shrieked, thrashing.  “No nails!  I call foul!”

Pacifica propped herself up, looked Mabel dead in the eye, and snapped off her acrylic nails.  They tumbled onto the couch, one by one.  Mabel gaped.

Looking smug, Pacifica held out her hand.  “Phone.”

“Paz,” Mabel said, “my friend.  My dude.  Light of my life.”  Pacifica crooked her fingers impatiently, and Mabel turned the cell phone so that the text chat on the screen faced Pacifica.  “It’s too late.”

“God damn it!” Pacifica groaned, collapsing on top of a giggling Mabel.  Mabel stuffed a handful of acrylic nails down the back of her shirt.  Pacifica didn’t stop her.

Just then, Mabel heard a door open upstairs.  She and Pacifica froze.  They made eye contact, and in a split second of telepathic communication, they both sprang upright, putting a good twelve inches between them.  Mabel’s head buzzed.  What had just happened?

Feet thumped down the stairs.  As Pacifica straightened her hair, Mabel caught sight of her open sketchbook, bright with Shooting Star designs.  She snapped it shut just as Dipper appeared in the doorway, Bill in tow.  Pacifica turned on her tablet, saw the riot gear on the screen, and turned it off again.

“Oh, hey, Pacifica.  I didn’t know you were here,” Dipper said, slowing on his way past the couch.

“That explains why you didn’t come running to see me,” Pacifica replied.  A couple of acrylic nails fell out of her sweater when she shifted.

“Yeah, I usually don’t let evil spirits hang around this long.  Mabel must have turned off the alarms.”

“She bribed me with sprinkles.” Mabel leaned against Pacifica, discreetly hiding the acrylic nails behind her.

Pacifica’s mouth twitched like it did when Mabel muttered a low-class joke to her, just out of her parents’ earshot.  Then, she looked at Bill.  There was a pause—barely a second long, but enough for Dipper to notice Bill and Pacifica staring at each other.

“Oh, yeah, I don’t think you guys have met.  This is my boyfriend, Bill,” he said.

Pacifica reached out for a handshake, all business, and Mabel pushed down a mischievous grin.  Pacifica did business like a boa constrictor did hugs.

“Pacifica Northwest.  I know who you are.”

Bill glanced at Mabel, who was caught between the same panic flickering in Bill’s eyes and a petty sort of joy, until Pacifica said, “You work at the coffee shop downtown.”

“That I do,” Bill replied without missing a beat.  Mabel grudgingly sent him props for keeping up appearances.  “Bill Cipher.  Nice to meetcha, Llama.”

Pacifica blinked rapidly.  Mabel frowned, baffled, until she saw the pattern on Pacifica’s sweater.  All the pleasantry leaked out of Pacifica’s façade.

“ _Pacifica,”_ she corrected him icily.

“Whatever you say, Llama.”

Color flooded Pacifica’s face as Dipper ushered Bill into the kitchen.  She stood up abruptly.

“M’gonna get changed,” she mumbled, grabbing her blouse.  She scurried to the bathroom before Mabel could say anything.

Sinking into the couch, Mabel cast a scowl toward the kitchen.  Pacifica didn’t check her makeup every fifteen minutes like she used to, but public image still caged her.  There was just more space between the bars.

Mabel gathered up the acrylic nails before Pacifica reclaimed her spot on the couch.  She was still wearing the sweater.  When she saw Mabel staring, Pacifica lifted her chin like she was trying to look down her nose at something, but she avoided eye contact.

“Your shack is drafty,” she said, lifting the sweater to show her blouse underneath.  “And you’ll probably spill your drink again.”

Mabel said nothing.

“Shut up,” Pacifica told her. 

Mabel hugged her so tightly that Pacifica’s breath puffed out.  Pacifica wormed one arm free so she could hug back, fumbling for something with the other.  Then she dumped a handful of acrylic nails down the back of Mabel’s shirt, and Mabel squealed.

~

Mabel let Pacifica order her new costume, although she drew the line at expedited shipping.  (“Fifty bucks, Paz?  _Fifty?_   Get out of my house.”)  She had to grab her measuring tape before they finalized the order.  If the growing pains and shrinking wardrobe were anything to go by, her sizes had changed since the incident with Old Man McGucket’s chemistry set.

By the time Pacifica had gathered up her belongings to leave, there was a thin sheen of sweat on her neck, but she shot down Mabel’s suggestion to “ _maybe take off the sweater, Paz, you’re wearing two layers in summer.”_   Bill had left a few minutes earlier, so it wasn’t like she was making a point to him.

“I almost forgot—is Dipper still being an ass about Shooting Star?” Pacifica asked, interrupting Mabel’s attempts to steal her sweater back.

“Oh, I never told you!” Mabel said, slapping her forehead.  “He stopped talking crap—apologized and everything.  I guess I’m easier to read than I thought.”

Pacifica’s mouth tilted, and she nodded faintly as she went back to her purse, giving her bangs a flick.  “Good.”

Mabel furrowed her brow.  The smile, the little nod, the flick of her hair—they barely brushed the surface of Mabel’s mind, but old experiences swam up to meet them like fish to bait.

“Paz,” Mabel said slowly, “you didn’t say something to Dipper, did you?”

Pacifica stilled.

Mabel’s shoulders slumped.  “Paz, we’ve talked about this.”

“I didn’t say anything _bad_ ,” Pacifica protested, crossing her arms.  She kept her head down.

“What did you say?”

“I told him Shooting Star is your favorite superhero, so he shouldn’t talk crap about her anymore,” Pacifica muttered.

Mabel hummed, tapping her fingers together.  “Did you say it just like that?”

Pacifica scowled.  “No…”

“What _exactly_ did you say?” Mabel sighed.  Huffing, Pacifica mumbled something.  Mabel leaned closer.  “Hm?”

“I said, ‘you’re dead to me if you ever talk crap about Mabel’s favorite superhero again.’”

Groaning, Mabel ran a hand over her face.  “ _Paz_ …”

“I know, I know.  I’m sorry I went behind your back,” Pacifica interrupted, leaning against the couch with a thump.  “But I didn’t _threaten_ him or anything, and he sounded like he already knew something was bothering you.  He thanked me for saying something.”

Mabel made a doubtful noise, eyeing the ceiling.

“You were worried you might give something away if you talked to him about it, right?  So, I told him you’re a big fan.  Problem solved,” Pacifica insisted.

Mabel gave her a look.  “You still have to apologize.”

Pacifica groaned and threw her head back against the couch, but she said, “Fine.”

Nodding to herself, Mabel squeezed Pacifica’s shoulder.  “Thank you for standing up for me.”

Pacifica grunted and let Mabel pull her into a hug.

“At least you didn’t threaten to have the mafia cut off his dick,” Mabel added.

“That was one time, and I was totally justified.  _You_ _said_ I was justified.”

“I know, I know,” Mabel laughed.  “Zac was a dick.”

“He could’ve been dickless,” Pacifica muttered.

“You don’t have mafia connections.”

“Don’t need ‘em.”

“Down, girl.”  Mabel heaved herself off the couch, brushing off an acrylic nail.  “You got everything?”

Pacifica followed Mabel into the entryway, although she faltered when Mabel made a left turn up the stairs.  When they reached Dipper’s room, he was cramming his keys and phone into his pockets.  He raised his brows at them.

“What’s up?” he asked.

Mabel nudged Pacifica.  Paz looked at her quizzically for a second, but then Mabel jerked her head at Dipper, and Pacifica closed her eyes, huffing.

“Dipper,” she said, business-like.

Dipper, who had been watching them with a raised brow, replied, “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry for what I said when I called you the other day.”   She crossed her arms, scowling.  “Even if you totally deserved to be called out, I…could’ve phrased it better.  Sorry if I hurt your feelings, or whatever.”

Dipper blinked at Pacifica and then Mabel.  The corners of his mouth twitched.  “I don’t know.  I think you should grovel some more.”

“Take the apology or leave it,” Pacifica said flatly.  Mabel elbowed her.

Snickering, Dipper waved a dismissive hand.  “I’ll take it.  Tell Mabel to let you off the hook.”

Pacifica turned to Mabel.  “You heard him.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mabel said.  “C’mon, let’s go make sure the neighborhood hooligans haven’t messed with your Camaro.”

Pacifica sent Mabel a look and dug her car keys out of her purse.

As Mabel watched Pacifica roll out of the Mystery Shack’s parking lot, sunlight catching on the pearlescent silver paint job, Dipper stepped out of the house behind her.  He frowned at Pacifica’s receding license plate.

“That’s not a Camaro,” he said.

“I know.  It’s a Corvette,” Mabel replied.  “Where are you going?”

Dipper unlocked his truck.  “I want a closer look at Enkryptos’ messages.  I should be back before dinner.”

“Nerd.  See you later.”

Dipper slid into the driver’s seat but didn’t close the door.  “By the way,” he called, “that was obviously a Lamborghini.”

Mabel made an exaggerated sound of agreement, and Dipper drove off with a grin.  A few blocks away in a silver Mercedes, Pacifica was probably getting chills.

~

Mabel’s phone buzzed about an hour later.  When she checked the message, she frowned.

_Dip-Dop: I’m checking out the blind eye society’s old hideout like a white person in a horror movie. If I don’t text again in like 30 min, I’ve been brutally murdered_

_D: Or my battery died. I’m at 24%_

Mabel typed out a message and hit send.

_M: Why??? Should I be worried?_

She waited, but there was no response.  She chewed her lip.  Fifteen minutes, she told herself.  She’d give him fifteen minutes to reply, and then she’d check on him.  It wasn’t like the Blind Eye Society was around anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now you get to wait (again) for Dipper to meet Enkryptos. Next chapter, I promise.  
> Also, Pacifica is wrong. Candy won't send her the dramatic chipmunk. It'll be the "you like krabby patties don't you squidward" meme.


End file.
